Study in Fear
by ChrisLynch
Summary: Batman meets a new foe and must conquer his greatest fears to save Gotham.
1. Chapter One

  
A Study in Fear : Part I  
The rain was biblical in proportion. Or at least it was to Dutch, who had all the religious beliefs that you could write on a postage stamp. His last night in Gotham, and he would spend it underneath a torrential downpour. Of course, he could stay home, but going out was all part of his last night in Gotham.  
Dutch was a crook, a safe cracker and expert lockpick.. or he had been.. until The Batman. Now he could hardly move the fingers of his left hand, and the nagging pain in his shoulder was almost unbearable in the damp. In tonight's wet it had already started to ache even though his jacket and heavy jumper. The ache brought back the memories, and the memories brought back the fear..   
It had been an easy job. Three men: One to drive the van through the doors of the warehouse, another to help the first load whatever loot was to be found into the truck, and Dutch to bust into the office and raid the safe. He'd done it a hundred times before, even if the two kids that Boss Marco has set him up with hadn't; but everyone had to start somewhere, and apprenticeships are a tradition alive and well in the criminal fraternity. Dutch didn't ask what was in the safe, that was for Boss Marco. He knew he'd get his cut of the loot from downstairs plus a generous gratuity from the Boss.   
The job was simple, and should have been smooth, except that someone else already had plans for the warehouse. Dutch had expected a night watchman, maybe two, and had stashed a heavy cosh inside the duffel bag he used to carry his kit. As the van revved up some hundred yards from the door of the warehouse, Dutch slipped it out of the bag and fixed it tightly in his grip. He'd never had to use it; and that fact had made it almost a lucky charm to him. Dutch was a skilled crook who didn't like resorting to violence, and he hoped this job would be like the rest.  
Dutch felt the van began to move, and shortly his was hurtling forward as fast as the engine could take it. With his free hand Dutch gripped onto a hanging loop of rope in the back of the van as he saw the doors approach. The driver let out a yell of premature triumph as the last few yards were eaten up. Dutch closed his eyes as the van hit the doors and felt the brief moment of motionlessness before the doors crumpled inwards from the impact of the van. The van skidded to one side as it careered through the doors, the driver cursing as he fought against the momentum of the machine. Dutch opened his eyes as the van came to a stop, and was face to face with a scene he would remember for the rest of this life.   
Everyone in Gotham knew the Joker. His grisly reputation had become a part of the folklore of the place. Children un safe suburban homes where told gruesome tales of the Joker to keep them in their beds, and in the seedy bars and clubs which housed the city's criminal underclass his name was synonymous with some the bloodiest and bizarre crimes in the cities history. It was said that the Joker had a finger in every criminal pie in Gotham and that tribute paid to him was as close to guaranteed safety from the lunatic as anyone would ever get within the city limits. The Joker pulled jobs of his own of course, but to a professional criminal like Dutch these were nothing more than the attention grabbing antics of a madman bent on conflict with the one nemesis that every criminal in Gotham feared. As Dutch opened his eyes, the van still rocking gently from side to side it was the face of the Joker that greeted him.   
Inches from the glass of the windshield the Joker's eyes burned through the glass. Even though Dutch was inside the van the Joker was the one with the look of the caged animal. Drool ran from one corner of his mouth, a mouth locked in a permanent maniacal grin. Dutch could see the body of the warehouse's night watchman behind the Joker, spread-eagled on the floor. Blood was pooling like thick red tar underneath him, but Dutch couldn't see what had happened to him. It seemed like the Joker stared at Dutch for hours, not saying a word. In reality it couldn't have been more than a second, and it wasn't until the Joker's two burly henchmen dragged the driver and the other passenger out of the van that Dutch's senses started processing at full speed again.   
The driver was on the floor, screaming for mercy, clawing at the leg of his assailant. A dark, wet, patch stained the front of his trousers; his terror getting the better of him. The Joker looked at him pityingly, and with a nod signalled to his henchman. The henchman pulled him to his knees and dragged him in front of the Joker. The Joker looked at Dutch, who sat rigidly in the front of the van, then back at the driver. He was nothing more than a kid, twenty at most, and Dutch could hardly look as the Joker held the boy's face between his cold white hands. Tears rolled down the face of the boy as he stuttered desperately "We don't know Mr. Joker... We didn't know. We'll go, we 'aint see ya."   
And the Joker answered. In the years to come, when Dutch woke screaming in his bed remembering this night, he would never be able to remember what the Joker's voice sounded like. He could remember the word's he said, every single one, and the details of the place, but he could never remember the voice. He could only remember the feeling he got as he heard it; like someone was pouring treacle into his ear, hot and sticky, burning the flesh as it ran into his brain... Dutch supposed that when the Joker spoke, that was what madness sounded like.   
"But you have seen me. And my gang. You've seen us here, in this place, doing naughty naughty things. You might not tell your mother or your brother or your friends; but I take the risk you won't tell the Bat?"   
"I won't I promise.." sobbed the driver.   
"The Bat can be very persuasive...." The Joker said. He was pondering his position, the twisted chains of logic that ran in his mind as valid to him as our own are to us. "If and if you tell the Bat we were here, he'll know what we took... and if he knows what we took, he'll know what we want.. and if he knows what we want then he'll know why..." there as a moment of almost palatable silence "AND THAT WON'T DO AT ALL!"   
Dutch could hear the bones in the kid's face crack as the Joker tightened his grip, as if he would squeeze the very life out of he boy. The kid squealed in pain and the Joker dragged the boy's face to his chest. And then the boy screamed. The scream was ear piercing, almost inhuman, and Dutch could see why as the boy fell away from the Joker. His face was steaming; a fine red mist trickled off it as he hit the floor. Whatever the Joker had sprayed him with had turned the flesh of his face to a thin greasy fluid that ran off his skull like oil. It pooled on the floor around his head and he twitched and jigged. Somehow, he was still alive even as his eyes began to stream out of the sides of his eyes. Dutch watched, unable to move speak or breath until the kid let out a rattling moan and finally lay still. His clean bleached skull was plainly visible, with only a few thin strands of flesh left to hold it in place.   
For the first time since he had locked eyes with the Joker, Dutch realised that he was still holding tightly to his cosh. It fell from his fingers and clattered to the floor of the van between his legs. He could feel his knees knocking together as his legs started to spasm. He fought with every ounce of his will for them to stop, for the noise of their motion to stop, which to Dutch was deafening.   
That was when it happened. A noise from above, the shattering of glass and a shape in the night that Dutch had never dreamed he would be glad to see. The glass rained down, refracting the mix of starlight and artificial light that lit the warehouse floor to create a mosaic of colour that hung in the air as the shape loomed, black and terrible behind it. Under other circumstances it would have been beautiful. The Joker's henchmen pulled guns from holsters and began to fire at the shape. The crack, crack, crack of the guns was deafening. The stench of gunfire rose into the air. Joker was running for the stairs to the manager's office as the shape fell closer. It fell and fell, twisting elegantly in the air until it landed...   
The shape hit the floor soundlessly; for a second it was only a shape. A mass of black that slid and slithered around. Then it rose; gained definition, a new shape. The shape of a man? The shape of a bat? The shape of a monster?   
The Batman.   
The goons stopped firing, dropped their guns and ran. The shape that was the Batman moved quickly, letting fly spinning disks of black metal that hummed as they cut the air. The first took one of the goons in the back of his left knee, sending him sprawling into a collection of crates. His impact toppled the rest of the crates down on him as he lay helpless. The second disk caught it's mark behind the his right ear and he crumpled to the floor as if his legs had simply ceased to function. The shape that was the Batman turned towards the stairs to the office, it's cape swirling like enormous wings behind it. It moved, flowed, flew towards those stairs. Dutch remembered thinking "it can't be human" as the shape seemed to reach the top of the stairs without covering the distance between, simply willing itself into to a new place. Dutch knew this was crazy of course.. He also knew he had to get out of here. The Batman was distracted, he had the Joker to deal with, and Dutch could still salvage his freedom from tonight. After what had happened to his driver, just staying alive was enough profit for Dutch, alive and free? That was a good score! Grabbing his cosh and tool bag Dutch jumped out of the van. He was only seconds away from the main doors, which lay in disarray from the van's forced entry. Dutch ran for it, trying not to look at the driver's body which lay steaming and popping just feet away.   
Dutch only heard what happened next. The shattering of more glass, muffled gun shots, a crash and a bellowed .. "STOP!"  
Dutch kept running. If the "stop" had been for him it was too late, he was home free, if not then..   
Suddenly Dutch was running straight towards that shape that he had though he had left behind. It fell from above; it's shadow rising over him from behind. The shape arced through the air overhead, landing in silence in front of him. It stood, stopped, stared. The thin white slits in the mask that hid the Batman's true face locked with Dutch's own eyes. Blood was trickling out of the corner of the Batman's mouth and a deep cut across his left shoulder leaked crimson down the dark greys and black of his tunic. "He's human" thought Dutch; and feeling the cosh still firm in his hand he felt a renewed sense of himself. "He's human and hurt".   
Dutch didn't stop. He raised the cosh and kept running. A roar of defiance came to his lips as it had come to the lips of the young driver only minutes before. The shape didn't move. It waited. The Batman waited. Dutch grew closer, every foot of distance bringing him closer to destiny. If he could just get past him, knock him aside, make him dodge.. The Batman waited. With a second to spare Dutch swung the club. It whooshed through the air, aimed directly for the Batman's head. The Batman moved. His left arm came up, easily deflecting the blow, shattering the club with his immense forearm. Shards of wood flew in all directions as the Batman spun with the deflection, closing the gap between himself and Dutch in a second. His right arm followed the path of the left, coming down of Dutch's extended arm. As it did so, the left arm was on it's return journey, and the tow met simultaneously across the top and bottom of Dutchs arm. There was a load snap and a shock of numbing pain that ran from Dutch's wrist of his shoulder. The Batman spun away, releasing his grip on Dutch and sending him head over heels out of the door and into the street. Dutch remembered almost welcoming the unconsciousness that was the inevitable result of the impact of his head on the sidewalk.   
Eighteen hours later Dutch was released from the hospital into police custody. His arm in plaster and a sling, the doctor berating the police officers who took him away for condoning the "ruthless vigilantism" that was the Batman's stock in trade. The doc had told him he was lucky that the damage had not been more severe, and that the loss of a few tendons would affect his finer motor skills. Dutch knew better. He wasn't lucky. The Batman had known exactly what he was doing. The heavy bag of tools that Dutch had been carrying marked him as more than any common thief. It marked him as a tradesman, and expert, and a career criminal. The damage to his arm had ended that career and the Batman knew it, just like he had known where and how to hit Dutch to end that career.   
Dutch shook himself, trying to shift the ache out of his shoulder and his back. His last night in Gotham and he would spend it waiting on the street corner for an unmarked van full of guys he would only know by name and reputation. He was just muscle on this job, a lifter, and maybe some of the boy's might now the story of how Dutch had lost everything and ended up just another petty criminal. He would tell those who didn't, as they waited in the cold and the dark of the back of the van. Maybe some of them might learn the lesson that Dutch had learnt. Sure, after his first run in with the Bat he had tried to carry on the same life. His skill was gone however, and he didn't make the grade as muscle for any of the big operations. Dutch still didn't like violence. Gotham had changed, and Dutch had changed, and tonight was his last night in Gotham. Tomorrow he caught a bus to anywhere and started a new life. All he needed was his cut from this last job. Maybe he would tell the guys this as well..   
A van cruised slowly around the corner and flashed it's lights at Dutch. He stepped out into the street and raised his hand. The van slowed and stopped next to him, and he climbed in through the side door which was already open. Kids, thought Dutch as he found himself a place to sit, the van was full of kids. Remembering what had happened to last bunch of kids that the boss had sent out with him; Dutch was amazed that he had gotten this job. Sat with his back to the side of the van, the kids chatting, joking and bragging all around him, he decided not to tell his story.  
  



	2. Chapter Two

# A Study in Fear : Part II

Dutch hit the floor and didn't get up. Batman stood above him and laughed. And laughed. And laughed. And the more that he laughed, the more he sounded like the Joker. And the more that he sounded like the Joker, the more Dutch remember what madness sounded like.

"My dear fellow, writhe and grovel all that you will for it will gain you nothing." said the Batman, stepping over Dutch and crouching down in front of him. He grabbed a fistful of Dutch's hair and pulled his face up to meet his. Dutch didn't think he had hit him that hard, but still Batman's face wavered and floated like the surface of a lake of his vision. Dutch felt punch drunk, like he done ten rounds, or twenty, not a matter of seconds which was all that had passed since Batman had appeared.

"You know, it really is incredible just how afraid you are." said Batman, dropping Dutch face first into the concrete floor. "I can't remember that last time that I felt terror. Real terror." Batman's voice trailed off and walked a few paces away from Dutch. Dutch pulled himself up on one elbow and felt something loose and heavy inside his jacket. He reached down and felt a heavy wet shifting mass where his stomach was supposed to be. Blood dripped between the buttons of his jacket, and he felt his insides move outside as he groped around.

Behind Batman Dutch could see the others that he had been on this job with. Kids most of them, they were scattered around the warehouse like a child's discarded Christmas toys. Twisted into shapes that people weren't supposed to make, grim marionettes with their strings cut. Blood was splattered over the floor and the walls. Some much blood. And something else. Something that hung in the air and clogged the throat and made Dutch's eye weak and teary. Something that in the back of Dutch's mouth tasted like fear.

"You... shot me?" the question sounded ridiculous; but Dutch had been sure that the Batman never used guns. It was part of the legend. Everyone knew. The Bat _hated_ guns. Didn't he?

"Of course!" said Batman, snipping on his heel to face Dutch again. "And wouldn't I ?" As he moved closer he seem to grow in size. His shoulders grew wider, he was taller, and his face. His face was as black and terrifying as Dutch had dreamt a thousands times since he was last this close to the Batman. 

"Because you're..." croaked Dutch. He stopped mid-sentence as a hot pain suddenly engulfed his chest. He felt something pop somewhere down in his abdomen, and the front of his jacked was suddenly thick with escaping blood.

"Why not?" said Batman, his faces inches from Dutch now.

"Because you're Batman"

"Yes, that's right. I am."

And the Batman laughed. And before Dutch died he knew for sure what madness sounded like.

* * *

It was cold on top of police headquarters, with a thin wind from the docks cutting across the city. Jim Gordon pulled his raincoat a little tighter against the chill and waited for Batman to arrive. The Bat-Signal blazed in the sky on the underside of a thick bank of cloud. A storm was brewing, Gordon could the anticipation in the air. It was palatable making the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end as he stood watching the clouds. He supposed it was static electricity, or air pressure, or something similar, or maybe just man's eternal fear of the elements.

"Jim" 

The deep voice behind Gordon was unmistakable. It was less than a voice, and yet more. More like the feral growl of a wolf, but with a depth of human compassion Gordon knew was missing from his own voice. Was missing from the voice of most men and women alive.

"Batman... I'm glad you could come". Gordon never knew how to start these conversations. He had known Batman for nearly five years and yet. Whatever was between them, whether or not it ran deeper or truer than friendship, had no room for niceties. "There's a situation I need to talk to you about"

Batman stood impassively. Waiting. Like the clouds. A storm brewing.

"A robbery was foiled last night, at the Shipman warehouse off Dock C". Gordon shuffled his feet and couldn't believe that was self conscious after all this time. How many times had he gone through this, in real and in theory. How many times had the integrity of the man standing before him been questioned and how many times had he been borne out. But still Gordon had to ask the question; had to know for himself. "Some the robbers... died. The others, the ones that survived, say that you were there"

Batman was silent. The clouds rolled on overhead and the first droplet of rain fell and sizzled on the hot lamp of the Bat Signal.

"I didn't patrol the docks last night" he said. Before Gordon to speak there was a crack of thunder overhead and the rain began to fall in earnest. 'Does even the weather wait for him?' wondered Gordon.

"OK" said Gordon. "Batman, you know that I have to ask. It's not for me, but it's for the people who trust me like I trust you. That's why I have to ask"

"I understand" said Batman, although there was something in his tone that made Gordon think that he never would. He had chosen his life, his crusade, his quest, whatever it was that he called it and by doing so had distanced himself from everyone and everything. He was the Batman, and whilst everyone knew and was afraid of the Bat the Man remained an enigma.

"The men who died, they way they died. It's unusual. I thought you might like to take a look". Gordon drew a thin file from inside his raincoat and held it outstretched. The Batman moved out of the shadows and took it, slipping back the moment that he had them in his grasp. Before Gordon could speak Batman moved his hand to his ear and looked out across the city. His eyes narrowed as he turned back towards the Commissioner. "I have to go" he said.

Suddenly a door opened behind Gordon and a young police officer stepped out onto the rain swept roof. "Commissioner" he called out, shielding his eyes against the rain and the glare from the Bat Signal. Gordon turned towards the officer, doing his best to stay between Batman and the other man. It was no secret that the Commissioner of Police held an allay in Gotham's Dark Knight, but Gordon appreciated that the myth of Batman was at least as important as the reality.

"Commissioner" said the officer "Lt. Bullock said you had to come right away. It's a siege at Gotham TV1. There are hostages."

Gordon turned back towards the Batman. "I have to..."

But there were only shadows and clouds and rain and thunder and the Bat Signal glaring out at the storming sky.

"Switch that thing off" said Gordon as he pushed past the young officer and down the stairs.

* * *

The TV studio shouldn't have been silent. The cameras were still rolling; but the show was over, at least the show that had been planned. Reverend Buddy Doyle lay across the toppled alter from which he had delivered his sermon just an hour ago. The plastic Jesus on the front has smashed, leaving the decapitated body of the Messiah still nailed to the cross. The head had rolled away, and now stared blankly up at the one of the TV cameras, it's mouth half open to speak, but the words lost. The poignancy of the image was wasted on a TV audience; which sat in a terrified silence, broken only by their own shallow breathing. Some of them had noticed that Buddy had stopped breathing some time ago, but most of them were still staring at the plastic Jesus.

None of them could move.

Because, if they moved, 40kg of Semtex explosive would be set off which would reduce them, Buddy and the plastic Jesus to a barely seperateable pulp.

Above them, in the control room of the TV studio, another show was being filmed. It was, predominately, unscripted.

Dr. Michael Rosen sat in a high backed leather chair and leaned close to the lens of the camera. A day's growth of this beard had cast a grimy gray shadow across his face, and dirty smudge marks were streaked under his eyes. His eyes were glazed, but contained a serenity which was almost absorbing. Dr. Michael Rosen knew something that the rest of the world didn't. Or at least he thought he did. Either way, it was his conviction that had given him the presence of mind to strap 200 innocent Gothamites to their chairs in a TV studio, kill the shows evangelical host, and sit here and talk to his captive audience (here and at home) for the past hour and a half.

"And so, you see, in conclusion my dear friends.. what I am doing here is purely a manner of demonstration. I do not, and cannot, expect you to care about the fate of two hundred Mexican boys in a refuge in a town which you've never heard of and will never visit. They are just faces on a TV screen to you and me. Images; flat 2-dimensional images. But what about 200 people from the city that you live in ?"

Rosen rubbed the bridge of his nose. Until this morning he had worn prescription glasses. He was a better person now though, and wearing glasses shouldn't have been necessary.

"I want you to pledge your money, people of Gotham", he continued, "To save... People of Gotham! Is the price to much to pay now? Is the problem not close enough to home? Pledge your money now and, not only will these people go free but little Pedro.... ah little Pedro."

The glazed look had returned to Rosen's eye and a single tear began to swell in the corner of this left eye. He held a hand to his chest over his heart, and placed the other on the top of the TV camera. Leaning so close that his face became little more than a blur with a mouth he whispered to the waiting world.. "We can save little Pedro!"

Outside, little Pedro's plight was generally being ignored. A police blockage had been thrown around the TV station; but this hadn't stopped a pack of reporters; baying and screeching like hyenas; from massing up against the cordon. Overhead, TV helicopters vied with police helicopters for the best view points whilst their search lights dogged each other over the front of the building. All but the essential staff required to keep the impromptu charity benefit being held by Dr.Rosen had been moved out the building and most were busy negotiating fees for their stories with their own or rival channels. 

Surrounded by another cordon of police tape and burly crowd control officers was the Gotham City Special Crime's Unit Operations Wagon. Just smaller in a tractor trailer in size, the inside was a cramped hive of electronics and logistics displays which had barely enough room left to house it's full compliment of ten officers. It dominated the scene before it, it's roof mounted antennas spinning around as it constantly monitored and controlled the activity around it. Inside, Jim Gordon was the human mind behind that electronic control.

"OK, I want information! I want to know who these kidnappers, what their demands are, what their agenda is. I want backgrounds. I want families. I want anyone who can give an insight into who these people are and what they are doing within arms reach in the next 30 minutes."

Police officers buzzed around Jim Gordon like bees around their queen. As each command was barked out an officer dispatched themselves to fulfill it, whilst another filled his place almost instantly. There was no question about who would do what or when; Gordon directed each command with precision at this chosen officer for each task. Nobody questioned his orders, nobody second guessed. It was not fear or rank that created this atmosphere, but respect. It was palatable in the air. Jim Gordon was here. The Commissioner was here. People outside of Gotham mocked him as a paper police man, a front for the urban legend that was responsible for policing Gotham City. These were people who hadn't met him; people who hadn't stood in his presence. There was a glow around him now, an aura like static electricity. 

With the last of the officers dispatched, Jim Gordon placed one hand on the small operations table and let out a long slow breath. The only man left in the op's vehicle, other than the men manning the various scanners and monitors was Lt. Harvey Bullock. A broad man with no taste in ties, shirts, food, or anything else Bullock was a street cop who had found his way to the top not through ambition but by being the best of his breed. He ate, slept, ate and drank police work and if there was no better police commissioner than Jim Gordon, there was no better police officer than Harvey Bullock. After No Man's Land Bullock had been promoted to Lieutenant, and while he was still adjusting to his new role, the people around him had already accepting him as an authority on policing in Gotham City.

"It's gonna be a long night Commissioner" he said, easing his way around Gordon to plump himself down in a free chair. "These wack-jobs say they won't free a single hostage until they've raised a million dollars for this goddamn Mexican Refuge"

"They won't negotiate"

"Not with me, not with you, not even with the priest that we ordered. They said they weren't serving God know, the higher power of the 'civil consciousness' whatever the hell that is". 

"See if we can run anything down on that" said Gordon, placing his hand on the shoulder of one of the computer operators "Maybe it's a new religious group of something"

"It's not" said a voice from behind Gordon and Bullock. Bullock spun on his chair to face the door whist Gordon turned more slowly. He had long since ceased to leap out of his skin when the Batman appeared. Batman stood framed in the doorway, a beam of light from an idling search light casting his shadow across the inside of the op's vehicle. Gordon shuddered; he may have stopped jumping, but Batman could still give him the willies. Batman flowed in through the door, his cape billowing out and pluming the room into a gloom before he stopped in a shadowed corner in of the truck. Lights from the computer monitor reflecting in the rain soaked leather of his cape and a small puddle was collecting around his feet. It looked to Gordon like he had already been outside for the best part of an hour; nearly as long as he had been here in the ops truck.

"And how would you know?" asked Bullock. His tone was gruff, aggressive. He had no patience with the Dark Knight's taste for melodrama and subterfuge. He had never understood why someone could risk their life in a cape and mask but not from behind a badge. He had heard the stories and the rumors; from his own colleagues as well as innumerate petty thugs and criminals he had found dangling from bat ropes around the city. He knew the myth, but unlike most others, he chose not to believe it.

"I keep a detailed file on religious and political groups active in Gotham, and they're not in it" replied Batman, his own tone calm, almost contemplative. "It seems more likely to a philosophical reference; something along the line of Jung's collective unconscious - the linking of human minds through the subconscious"

"So what do they want?" asked Gordon.

"They want to help people. They want to ally the guilt which society holds for neglecting it's own underclass"

"Your beginning to sound like that freak on the TV" interjected Bullock.

"I know." said Batman "I've been listening to him for a hour".

Inside the TV station things were not going as planned. Despite Dr. Rosen's impassioned pleas for donations, the phones had stayed quiet. The only calls had been from the police and their negotiators. Of course they wanted to help. Of course they wanted to help Pedro and the refuge. But they didn't have a million dollars. But the people did. In their banks and their wallets and underneath their sofas. They were the great untapped resource which could help the underclass, they were his bankroll in his mission to create a better society. But still not phone calls came. He knew the show was still on the air, his tiny portable TV showed him quite clearly as he spoke to the people of the suffering and the pain of Pedro and children like Pedro. He reminded them of their soft beds and their warm pillows and their food and their shelter and all things that they had. He reminded them of No Man's Land, and how for Pedro, everywhere was a No Mans Land.

Why didn't they listen.

Obviously, they needed more convincing.

Dr. Rosen stormed out of the control room and down the narrow metal staircase in the studio. The audience were still there of course, still sitting staring into nothingness. A dark red pool has spread out from underneath Reverend Buddy now and had coated the pale wood of the alter. As it pooled it had begun to look like the plastic Jesus was the one that was bleeding from his fatal decapitation. Again, The poignancy of the image was wasted. Dr.Rosen hurried over to the control box which he had placed behind Buddy and his alter. Bare wires snaked out from it to each one of the seats which housed the audience. It has been simple to construct, he had found most of the parts in his garage (with the exception of the Semtex which had come at no small price from a friend of a friend ). The gun had done the rest, finding him an impromptu workforce in the studio audience which he had taken hostage. Of course, they had needed to be convinced, and shooting Reverend Buddy in the face had made them most agreeable. The irony that they were trapped in seats rigged with explosives which they themselves had rigged was, of course, lost of them. Dr. Rosen detached one of the wires from the box and followed to the chair that it was attached to. It's occupant, a young girl in a dress with embroidered crucifixes on it and a badge with picture of Reverend Buddy's now missing face on it, sat in silence in front of Dr. Rosen. He took her by the hand, and with the gentle touch of a surgeon, led her out of the audience and up the stares.

One bullet had bought him the compliance of this studio full of people. How many would it take for Gotham City?


	3. Chapter Three

# A Study in Fear : Part III

In the bowels of the Earth it was winter. It was a bleak and soulless winter with a black, starless, sunless, moonless sky above and a cracked a shattered Earth below. Through the pitch night sky fell a snowfall of madness, each snowflake unique in it's insanity and infamy. the wind does not blow here, it screams. This.. is Arkham.

But it's not all bad.

"So Jonathan, what progress have you made with the bipolar Mr. Dent?"

"Marvelous, incredible ! The aversion therapy that I suggested seems to be working excellently"

The two men walked side by side down the narrow dimly lit corridor. The walls were lined with steel doors, each labeled with the name of it's reluctant occupant. Nigma, Jones, Crane, Zsasz, Cobblepot, Dent. A veritable who's who of Gotham's criminally insane; each door the only thing holding back a world of madness and mayhem. The two men stopped in a section of the corridor where the wall had been replaced with a wide glass floor to ceiling window. Through the glass they watched the huddled figure of a man cloaked in shadows.

"He's sleeping?"

"Yes, and nightmaring."

"How can you tell"

"The breathing patterns, the restless motion of his head and limbs and...."

"And?"

"I've nightmared before now"

"Not surprising, the things that you must have seen down here"

The second man chuckled. "It's not what's down here that scares me. It's what's out there.". He pointed a thin finger towards the ceiling, indicating the world that still turned above. The other doctor nodded. At least in here there were guards and guns and doors and locks and sheets of toughened glass between the sane and the insane. Of course, there were escapes, but nobody could be expected to second guess the devilish and devious lengths that some of Arkhams inmates would go to to win their freedom. Even now, somewhere in Gotham, the Joker was free to scheme and plot and act out the deranged fantasies that occupied his mind. At least in here, they were under lock and key. Out there...

Suddenly there was a scream from the other side of the glass, so loud that it shook the panel it's frame and made both doctors jump with fright. The huddled figure sat bolt upright and shook with terror, or perhaps rage. It leapt from it's low bed and, turning, hurled itself bodily against the glass. It shook in it's frame again, but held firm.

"Guard!" yelled the first doctor, subconsciously fumbling a radio panic button from his jacket pocket.

"It's alright." said the other doctor, staying the first doctor's hand from his panic button, and stepped closer to glass until his nose was almost pressed against it.

The figure, now down on all fours, slammed a fist into the glass. Again, it held firm. The figure stuck again, and again. Another fist against the glass, and then another. Blow after blow bounced from the toughened glass, until dull red patches began to mark the spots where raw and bloodied knuckles had struck. The figure rose to it's knees, still punching, then to it's feet, lashing out with fists and arms and elbows.

Finally, the hammering stopped.

Blood trickled like rainwater down the glass. The figure stood hunched, it's shoulders rising and falling as it breathed hard. It spat a thick globule of bloody sputum onto the glass, which hung there like a repugnant dead insect larvae. The figure stepped closer to the glass, step by slow and calculated step, until the figure was nose to nose with the doctor who remained calmly on the other side of the glass. The figures breath caused pluming patches of steam on the glass as it breathed, and a low feral growl escaped it's lips.

This, was Harvey Dent.

The face against the glass defied logical description. It's one side, smooth. A glistening eye, a tidy crop of rich brown hair and smile both handsome and wholesome. It had been a good face, this face. An honest face. A face that went to work, paid it's taxes, loved it's wife and never mumbled the middle of the national anthem. A face that had stood for law and order with such conviction. Conviction long since shattered. And as for the other side of that face? An eye that stared from a burnt and wasted socket. Raw and tortured skin that ran in rivulets from brow to chin with pulsing exposed veins and clotted fleshy masses that gathered alongside lines of almost protruding bone. Half a smile from a lipless mouth which showed yellowed rotting teeth in black, scaly gums. A face that lived in shadows. The face of a madness that had lived in Harvey Dent all his life. The face that lives in all of us, and the face that no one sees. The face behind the face that we show others. When acid had struck District Attorney Harvey Dent's face it had burnt and stripped and peeled away more than skin, flesh and bloody tissue. It had peeled away the lies and deceit, the moral facade the Harvey Dent had hidden his other mind behind, the disguise that he had worn every day of his life. This was the real face of Harvey Dent, and this was his own justice.

"Harvey, you need to make a decision. You need to decide to stop fighting this. You need to decide that you don't need this". The first doctor withdrew a small silver disk from his pocket. Holding to the dim light, the glimmer showed the face of Abraham Lincoln on both sides; one side crisscrossed with hack marks. The doctor pressed the undamaged side to the glass. "Do you want it Harvey?"

"Damn you.." cursed Two Face. He had moved his face away from the glass and pressed his scarred, lurid skinned hand against the glass as if he might be able to feel the cool silver surface of this coin through the misted partition.

"Do you want it Harvey?" asked the Doctor again, "Or can you decide without it?"

The hand against the glass fluttered spasmodically.

"I...", Dent's voice failed him, his mind failed him, and most of all his all consuming belief in the randomness of fate, luck, karma and destiny failed him. He wasn't impartial. He could only make the right decision, or the wrong decision. He couldn't make the random decision. And the random decision was what Two-Face's universe required. Harvey Dent slumped to the floor, and Two Face slumped with him, the two locked in combat on an unimaginable battlefield. As one of them began to sob, the Doctor walked away.

"He seems to be relapsing.. " said the second Doctor, casting a critical and doubting eye over the notes that he had been handed by the first Doctor just minutes before. "He still seems incapable of making a decision without this coin".

"Just the opposite." said the other Doctor. "This is precisely the reaction that I was hoping for. Harvey Dent is now locked in an internal philosophical battle with his other self, Two Face. How long this lasts can vary; a few minutes, a few hours, even days. But each time, one of them is coming out on top. Each time a decision is being made eventually. And the time is getting shorter. Soon Harvey Dent will have come out on top and Two Face will be no more. Dent will know what the coin represents, and he will be unable to even look at it.. for fear that he may once more loose ground to his other personality."

"And what if Two Face comes out on top?"

"He won't. He can't."

"Why not."

"Because Two Face is the one who is having all the nightmares."

The two doctors walked away, deeper into the catacomb understructure of Arkham. Deeper into the madness. It was hard to believe, but there were one or two people that were kept even deeper underground than Harvey Dent. As they faded into the shadows of the corridor, the first doctor fumbled with a small device in his pocket. Unseen by his compeer, he depressed a switch on a small remote control that he had secreted in his pocket since they had come down here. In Harvey Dents observation cell, the vents in the ceiling opened, and a bilious green gas blew forth. It was thick, like a fog, and it fell into puddles beneath the vents. Then slowly, as it continued to pump into the room, the puddles grew larger and thick probing tendrils crept out from their bellies. Harvey Dent knew what the gas meant, and he scrambled up onto the bed. Some decisions, both Harvey and Two Face could agree on.

The fog grew thick, and quickly grew into a carpet that covered the entire floor of the cell. Then it began to scales the walls, to fill the room with itself. It crawled around the legs of the small bed, and poked wispy heads like cobras above it's edge. It rolled in waves against the window, collapsing in on itself like a heavy sludge polluted waves. Inch by inch, foot by foot it grew. It was relentless. Soon, it was up to Harvey Dent's chest as he stood on tip toes of the top of the bed. As it passed his mouth and nose he took one final breath and held it for as long as he could. It was only when the gas had reached the ceiling, and he could hold his breath no longer that both Harvey Dent and Two Face began to scream.

* * *

Dr. Rosen stood in front of his audience, and the audience at home, and the millions around the world who were now following what he was doing on a live feeds from the Internet or their TV sets. Dr. Rosen stood in front of them and for the first and only time in his life he knew that what he was doing was right. He had made them sit up and take notice. He had shaken them from the fog and mire of their day to day lives. He had shown them truth. And it was true that Dr. Rosen was a better person now. The spotlight was on him. Hot and white like a new sun it bathed him in artificial radiance that made his skin feel pallid and dirty. He knew that he had bathed or shaved for some time now, and he could feel wet sticky patches growing under his arms even now as he stood in silence in front of the cameras. The cameras that were the eyes of the new world that he was creating.

Behind the cameras the audience was unnervingly silent. They had seen the evangelical host of the TV show that they had come to see hot dead before their eyes, his life leaking out onto the stage floor beneath him, his body now cold and gray sprawled across his toppled and defaced alter. Some of them had come to be healed. Others to be converted. Others to save their mortal souls. Salvation. It seemed so far away now, as far away as freedom.

The new and the old worlds watched and waited. Strangely, no one was praying.

The spotlight was cut by a shadow. Something silhouetted itself against the light, sending a vast black shadow down over the congregation, alter and preacher. The shadow, blurred at first, took form. Dr.Rosen was frozen in the center of the shadow as if someone had tilted the Batsignal down from the sky to point directly at him. His hands trembled and the small gun he had been holding clattered to the floor. His knees quaked and knocked together. Sweat ran down his face like fat salty slugs. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them took comfort in the face that the shadow was growing smaller. Until he realized that the shadow was getting smaller, because the Batman was getting closer. Much closer.

Out of the gloom that clung to the edge of the beam from the spotlight he came, cutting out the light. A thing of wings and cape and ears and hood. A thing which flowed and dropped and flew from the rafters which housed the enormous lights. He landed without a sound and closed the distance between him and Rosen without moving. He spoke without making a sound.

"Let these people go"

And Rosen fell to the floor, with a pain in his chest which his medical training told him was nothing short of fatal.

* * *

Outside, it was still raining, as if every sin could have been cleansed from these streets, washed into the sewers and spewed out into some dark and terrible sea. But this was not the great flood, nor even a minor one. This was just Gotham City, and this was just rain. Jim Gordon stood out in the rain and defied the common sense to use an umbrella. The media were clammering around him, and had been since they had carried Dr. Rosen out of the TV studio on a stretcher. They had not clammered from photographs for the stretcher or the paramedics; as one picture of a body covered by a sheet is much the same as another. Now they wanted more than blood, they wanted scandal and intrigue and gossip and hearsay and official denials what could later be quoted. They wanted the grease that oiled the drums of the printing presses. Gordon corrected himself... of course they wanted blood.

"Commissioner, is it true that Batman apprehended the terrorists?"

"Commissioner, is it true that Batman may have killed the ring leader?"

"Commissioner, how long with the Gotham City Police Department condone the use of excessive force by vigilantes?"

"Commissioner, is your office prepared to admit that Batman is not an urban myth?"

"Commissioner"

"Commissioner"

"Commissioner"

Gordon pushed his way through them without even offering his standard "No comment". He had never pandered to the media. He was a man of the people, and he hoped that the people knew it, hoped that they saw it the way that he refused to sit up and beg for thier attention and approval. He wished he could show it to them in clean streets and safe suburbs and 8 o'clock news bulletins which didn't begin with the words "Arkham Escapee..". But this was Gotham. The people could take it. Gordon pushed past the last of the reporters, ducked under a line of police tape and disappeared behind the ops truck. The white noise of accusation and inquiry died out behind him. The harpies would circle for another hour or so, then disperse. He hoped that none of them though to check the other side of the TV studio, where right now Bullock and Montoya were spiriting the former hostages away. Gordon hurried on, round the ops truck and through a small body of parked police cruisers. He found what he was looking for. Slumped up against the side of one of the cruisers, his cape folded around him like a pair of great leather wings, his head hung low. He found Batman.

"Jim.." whispered Batman. Gordon could hear the strain in his voice. He could hear the defeat, the failure. He had heard it before, when they had seen other lives lost. When they had failed.

"Batman," the word sounded ridiculous, but Gordon had no other name for this friend, "it wasn't your fault. You couldn't have known"

"I tried to save him"

"The paramedics told me; but they said that there was nothing that you could have done. Rosen was dead before you even got to him"

"I should have saved him"

"You couldn't"

"Jim," Batman's voice, so level, so deep. "That just isn't good enough"

Batman stood and turned away and Jim Gordon realized that he was about to experience one of those rare moments when he would see Batman leave. He watched as Batman turned; his cloak unwrapping and unfurling, flowing out behind him. He watched as the figure, it's shoulders low, walked slowly away. He couldn't be sure when Batman left his sight. He had thought that he had been walking straight away from him and in the light of spinning police cruiser lights and the glare from persistent helicopter search beams should have been visible. But, he was gone, and Jim Gordon realized that no one ever saw Batman leave.


	4. Chapter Four

In his high backed chair, shrouded in darkness, Batman sat and watched the police reports scroll down the screens in front of him. His eyes flicked from side to side as he read them, committing each one to memory, isolating facts, forming conclusions. The scrolling stopped, and the screens went blank. The Batcave was blackness, as if blackness was a thing that could be carved into vaulted ceilings, sharply dropping chasms and narrow precipice spanning walkways.  
  
"Lights"  
  
At the Batman's command, lights hidden somewhere in the vaulted ceiling of the cave, sprang into life. Discs of light grew on the floor, touching each other at their edges. They highlighted the central parts of the cave; the lab, the workshop, the garage, the gym, the trophy room.  
  
"Car"  
  
From somewhere below, a place hidden in the blackness that was the cave, the Batmobile arose like a leviathan from the deep. It's long black curves gleamed in the spotlight. It was hungry, hungry to cleave the virgin night in two and leave it quivering behind. Eager to throb and rumble and roar through the streets of Gotham. As Batman approached the engine sprang in gurgling, petrol guzzling life. The roof slid back to reveal the two seater compartment within. Batman jumped in, and waited while the lid slid closed above him. Safely secured inside, he let the autopilot whisk him deep into the throbbing heart of Gotham City. As the car flashed through the night, more data scrolled down the internal screens. Leaning back in his chair, the Batman watched and read and learnt. He learnt of a man who had been stealing some very unusual items. And he began to form conclusions.  
  
  
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In the Jazz Club, everything was as it was supposed to be. People were dancing, their graceless limbs fueled by alcohol and non-prescription drugs. People were laughing. People were talking. Bodies pressed against bodies in a throng that was just the wrong side of crowded. It was the place to be in Gotham's East Side. This place was becoming a Mecca, and tonight was becoming an event.  
  
In the club's backroom sat it's owner, a rich Cuban cigar in his mouth and a cheap Gotham girl in his lap. On the table in front of him was 30 grand in unmarked, non-sequential bills. He was ignoring the fact that some of them were dripping blood onto his expensive Indian carpets. He was more concerned with keeping his blood were it was; in his thin, cholesterol-clogged veins and pumping through his black heart. On the other side of the desk stood a man who could easily alter the flow of that blood, and Boss Marco was well aware of that fact. He was tall and slim, swathed in a heavy black trench coat. A hat was pulled down over his face, which Marco could see was half covered by some sort of mask. His hands were covered by thick leather gloves and his feet, beneath the coat, were clad in heavy leather boots. Marco knew the sort of person he was dealing with. The families usually stayed away from business with freaks like this; but No Mans Land had been a hard time and in the new climate of opportunity Marco's name didn't carry the reputation and fear that it once did.  
  
"I won't insult your reputation by counting the money" said the Boss casually, as one of his boys swept it carefully off the table and into a sack. "I hope you won't insult mine when we bring in the merchandise,"  
  
The other man crossed his arms over his chest and inclined his head once at the Boss. The Boss snapped his fingers, and through double doors on the other side of the room came two men, hauling behind them two heavy gas canisters. The man from the other side of the desk moved quickly over to them, inspecting the labels which identified their contents. He could not contain his glee.  
  
"Excellent Marco, you have outdone yourself. Your reputation does you justice. When Gotham wants, truly it is you that it comes to." The man's voice was muffled by his mask, giving Marco the creeps even more than he had already.  
  
It was the Boss's turn to nod, and he smiled a thick greasy smile as the man turned his back and concentrated on the canisters. He ran a pipe out from under his coat and attached it to one of the canisters, and with a quick motion, turned the release valve. The gas hissed as it traveled down the pipe and into whatever apparatus was contained within the coat.  
  
"Eh, I thought you wanted that stuff to.."   
  
"Poison someone?" asked the man on the other side of the desk, "Yes that's right." The first canister was empty now, and he connected himself to the second. "But I never explained the nature of my delivery system".  
  
The gas hissed, and something bubbled under the coat that the man was wearing. Boss Marco looked to one of his henchmen then another, and they slowly advanced out of the corners of the room towards the man. Sensing trouble, the harlot on Boss Marco's lap squirmed and tried to slip away, but the hand that had previously lain so lightly on her thigh now held her in place. The room was silent, except for the hiss of the gas.  
  
Then the hissing stopped.  
  
Suddenly the door behind the man fell inwards, ripped from its hinges. For the first time Boss Marco was aware that the sounds of dancing and laughing and singing and drinking had stopped. Somewhere in the back of his mind he was dimly aware that they might have been replaced by screaming. Smoke blew in through the doorway, and the crumpled form of one of Marco's bouncers toppled in and fell to a heap on the floor. The Batman walked in.  
  
"Freak, you got no business shaking me down," said Marco, and with a click of his fingers sent his two goons piling towards the Batman. Batman's history with the criminal underclass of Gotham was well established, but the crime families and their Bosses such as Marco were a different matter. These were not the cowardly, superstitious men that Batman flew down upon in the back alleys of the city. These were a different caliber of criminal; sometimes even more dangerous than the likes of the Joker. Cold, calculated career criminals to whom the suffering of others wasn't even a sick or satanic game. It was just business, just money, just greed.  
  
As the two men approached, Batman reached behind him into the recesses of his cloak. Before they had closed half the distance between themselves and Batman his hands had returned, swinging out from behind him like catapults. He released tiny silver capsules from his hands before the men were within arm's reach. The capsules burst, one in the chest and one in the face, releasing a thick cloud of gas that clung and crept like a thick amorphous creeper. Cocooned in choking gas, the men fell to the floor inches from the Batman. He stepped over their gagging, twitching forms to meet the man who had seconds ago stood on the other side of the desk from Marco. Now he stood between Batman, the desk, and Boss Marco.  
  
The man drew himself up to his full height, which was still a good few inches shorter than Batman. He pushed the brim of his hat back with one of his gloved fingers and the two masked men faced each other for a moment in silence. The man's mask covered most of his face; except for his eyes, forehead and hair. A thin lock of red hair hung down over his one eye, and others poked out from the back of the hat. The mask itself was white rubber, as was the rest of the man's outfit that could be seen under the coat. Only the gloves and boots were black.  
  
"Nice outfit" said Batman, "Who are you?"  
  
The other man smiled, and the rubber of the mask creaked. "I'm the future." he said, "I'm the answer to Gotham's prayers."  
  
"Really?" said Batman. The sarcasm in his voice was evident, as was his contempt for the individual in front of him as he kept one eye on Boss Marco. Marco had pushed his chair back from the desk, and froze with his hand half into one of the desk drawers when he noticed the Batman's eye on him. He slowly removed his hand, holding it up to show that it was empty.  
  
"Well.. Answer, Future, whatever you call yourself.. I suggest you get out of my way, unless you want to spend the rest of the night coughing your guts up like your friends back there." Batman drew closer to the other man, looming over him. He filled the man's vision. He was a shadow now, a huge thing of wing and darkness. He was so close that he could smell the other man, smell his fear. Batman knew the smell of fear, and his nostrils filled with it. He drank it in. He drank it down. He could feel it in his veins. He was in the dark place now, the place where the real Batman was, where the real Bruce was. He could smell the terror. And it was too late when he realized that fear wasn't the only thing that he could smell, and the floor was coming towards him almost as fast as the darkness was closing in.  
  
  
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The first thing that he sensed was the creaking. It reminded him of the gentle creaking of a ship as it lay idle in calm seas. A pirate ship perhaps, waiting off the coast of Never-Never land for a sighting of Peter Pan and his lost boys. Then there was the swinging, and the breeze. He was drifting oh so gently, the wind on his face. Perhaps he was up in the crows-nest, feeling the breeze, hoping to be the first one to make that sighting. Then he felt the hard, rough rope around his wrists and ankles that pushed through the toughened leather of his boots and gloves. His quickly recovering equilibrium told him he was upside down. He was upside down and he was tied up and he was Batman.  
  
Batman opened his eyes slowly, for the first time realizing that they were painful, swollen and puffy. He was upside down, hanging head first somewhere very dark. Instinctively, he began working his wrists, trying to get some purchase on the ropes. The sudden sharp pain in his right wrist, and the soft gluey feel as he moved told him that his wrist was probably broken. As he twisted on the rope a dull throb that quickly built to a burning pain began to spread from his ribs on both sides. He could taste blood in his mouth.  
  
"They really went to work on you". The voice was behind him, and even though it wasn't muffled like before he could recognize it as the man that he had met earlier. The Future. The Answer. That was what he had called himself. "They wanted to kill you, when they realized what I had done to you."  
  
"The gas," said Batman. His voice was rough, and he coughed forth a mouthful of blood as he spoke. He calmed himself, slowed his breathing. It did no good to show weakness. He would not show weakness. He was Batman, and he was still in control. Ignoring the pain in his wrist, he began working ropes aside again. He had a small knife in a concealed compartment in the lining of his left glove . He need only to reach it.  
  
"Yes the gas. Not entirely my own invention as I am sure you've guessed, or will guess, or at least know by now. Of course, I just told you...." the man was pacing around behind Batman, raving, his feet slapping against what sounded like concrete. "But effective nonetheless, and now tailored with my own unique range of biological cryptograms"  
  
"Viruses.." said Batman. He had been down this road before. If there was one thing more certain than the sheer, helpless, screaming madness of his opponents - it was their megalomania. They could never resist telling him their plans. In some cases it was a masochistic need to be defeated by him, the dark and terrible god, their king of the night. Terrified by their own inner darkness they turned to him to stop them from succeeding when they were powerless to stop themselves from indulging their fantasies. For others it was the intellectual challenge. To defeat the Batman and for him to know that he had been defeated, for him to know with his last dying breath that he had failed the city, and the people that he had pledged to protect. To tear the mask away and expose him as just another frail, mortal, flawed thing like themselves.   
  
For others of course, there was only the madness. They were the worst.  
  
"After a fashion", the man continued. "Batman, it may bring you some comfort to know that I am not going to kill you. No doubt you have already devised an escape plan, and frankly I would expect no less. In fact, I would be disappointed." Batman took no comfort from having a fan. Certainly not a fan with countless canisters of unknown airborne viruses at his command.  
  
One of the ropes slipped to one side, and Batman deftly slipped his thumb underneath it. He held the rope in place, so that it's movement would not give away his plan. He quickly worked another finger free. He did have his escape plan, but it had just been expanded into letting his mysterious assailant lay his entire plan out before him.  
  
"I'm not going to kill you Batman because we are on the same side. We are both creatures of the night, both dedicated to fighting crime, fighting evil, fighting the night things"  
  
"But I don't make deals with mob bosses like Marco". With his one hand free Batman slowly unzipped the compartment in his glove. He felt the hard plastic handle of the knife between two of this fingers. It was balanced for throwing, but would serve to cut the last of the rope away first.  
  
"Sometimes, in the fight against crime it is necessary to delve into it's underbelly. To place our hands inside it's guts. To smell its sweat and stink and spore. Surely you of all people understand that? I do. I understand that you have to know your prey to defeat them. Have to know what's in their minds. You have to know how to make them afraid."  
  
Batman twisted himself on the ropes towards the voice, ignoring the pain which exploded underneath his ribs as he did so. As he swung around towards the speaker he cut the last strands of the rope away with the knife. He let his arms fall free before curling up to reach his feet. He heard the man gasp. For all his talk of how he expected the Batman to be planning his escape, he had obviously underestimated how fast. Or perhaps he had overestimated the ability of Boss Marco's boys to incapacitate the Batman long enough for him to explain his theories on advanced crime fighting technique. The knife sliced through the binding around Batman's ankles and he flipped down onto the floor. Without his cape he was a different shape, more feral, more compact, a thing of tightly bunched muscles and explosively violent intent. He spun around to face the man who had held him.  
  
"Very impressive Batman. Impressive indeed but, as I am sure you are aware, ultimately futile. Just like you, I have been planning my escape since you regained consciousness". Stepping back, the man fell and disappeared from sight. Batman started after him, but his left leg buckled under him. Too long upside down, too long unconscious, his legs were weak and starved of blood. He stumbled and fell, but forced himself back to his feet. He moved forward again, his feet numb, his knees burning. It seemed to take forever to reach that trap door, days and weeks passed in the time that it took for his legs to start responding the way that he was used to. How long had he been unconscious? How long had he been here? How long had he been running towards the door? The distance seemed to spiral away from him as he approached the trap door and long before he got there he knew that his opponent has long gone.   
  
He looked down, and below were just the cold, dark waters of Gotham harbor. Touching a hand to the side of his cowl he activated his radio.  
  
"Alfred, recall the car to my current position."  
  
"Very good Sir, will there be anything else"  
  
"Yes.. get the medical kit ready."  
  
"As always Sir, Alfred out."  
  



	5. Chapter Five

Welcome back to Arkham. Another long, twisted corridor lined with doors to lunacy. The walls are the same stone, the floors the same concrete. The smells are the same; sweat, fear, decay, all man's primal enemies. Above and below you can feel the same hollow emptiness about the place, the soullessness that creeps out of the walls and into your veins and arteries until your heart pumps it's around your body even after you have left. This place is unmistakably Arkham. But still, there is that about this corridor that is different.  
  
At first, you don't notice it, but this corridor is silent. If you know Arkham, then you know that nowhere here should be silent. Least of all this corridor. The doors to all the rooms but one bear no names. An extra set of steel gates bar your path as you walk down the corridor. A sign; a bright yellow thunder flash over a black skull; warns you that the gate is electrified. It takes a second look for you to see that the floor is electrified as well - by virtue of a thin steel mesh ingrained into the floor. And then there are the guards.  
  
Arkham attracts a distinct caliber of staff to it's hallowed, haunted halls. Guards who's methods are too violent, too base for the left wing politics of the justice system find a niche for themselves here. The value of the punitive beating has never been forgotten in Arkham. They are, to a man, hard men. Physically and mentally, they are predisposed to stand at the mouth of madness without flinching, and to look straight into the eyes of the worst of humanity - before smacking it in the face with a billy club. The depravities and debasements visited on the inmates of Arkham are only matched by the depravities and debasements that those inmates themselves would commit if they were let free. A dangerous status quo exists, where the cruel and violent guard is a necessary and tolerated evil to protect the good men and women of Arkham who's vocation it is to heal it's tortured inhabits. Every once in a while a guard will go bad, step over the line. Usually they end up as inmates.. twisted mirror images of their former selves, whatever dementia they have succumbed to inflamed by the bitter irony of their situation. Others, those who command the respect of their fellow guards even after they cross the final line, are more lucky. For them there is a quick death.  
  
Knowing this, you would expect the guards in this corridor to be as they are everywhere in Arkham. Calm, cold, efficient. But even the hard men of Arkham are rattled when their tour of duty on this corridor comes around. Eyes dart furtively from TV monitor to TV monitor, studying the graining close circuit TV footage minute by minute. Hands rest on radios, billy clubs and (in some places) pistols or shotguns. There is no idle banter. No talk of wives, children, sweethearts or mistresses (for the good badmen of Arkham can afford them all). Not here, not in earshot of the only occupied cell on this corridor. Not if you want to sleep nights without a gun under your pillow.  
  
The ping of the lift as it arrived on the floor could have been the bugle cry before Armageddon to these men. Safeties popped on pistols as the doors moved slowly, slowly open. They were not clicked back into place until the single occupant of the lift revealed himself.  
  
"Gentlemen." said the doctor, inclining his head in greeting to the massed guards ahead of him in the corridor.  
  
"Sir" replied one of the guards. The Doctor recognized him as Pat O'Hara. The O'Haras were a fine old Gotham family, respected for the long line of good cops they had produced. The pride of their line had been Police Chief Clancy O'Hara. A testament to the uniform until his last day, and a legend within the uniformed ranks of the force to this day. But in every family there are the bad apples and the O'Haras were no exception. Pat O'Hara was nothing like his late sainted uncle Clancy. A short, pot bellied man with blackened teeth and breath that would cut a warhorse down in the midst of battle, Pat hadn't inherited the genes that had produced the fine physical specimen his uncle Clancy had been either. Despite his apparent lack of physical conditioning however, Pat was as feared as any O'Hara, any cop and certainly any prison guard had even been. In a place like Arkham, reputation was everything, and everyone knew the story behind O'Hara and how he had been drummed out of the GCPD.  
  
It had been five years ago, in a time when Gotham was besieged on all sides by urban legends. The Joker, The Penguin, The Riddler. You were no one in the Gotham underworld if your name didn't begin with "The", even the families were getting in on the game. Hoodlums and strong-arms dressed in cheap costumes and took names inspired or dictated by their costumed bosses and every crime had a theme. For the GCPD, it was turning into a long hot summer. For Sergeant Pat O'Hara, it had been a long hot year. The girl's name was ? and she and Pat had been apart no longer than 8 hours in the last six months. They'd met in a bar opposite the precinct - a place for old cops run by old cops. The beer was cheap, free if you've had one of "those" shifts and generous donations from the retirement funds of beat cops who fell in the line of duty kept this place open. No cop who walked in was ever less than welcome, even one as dirty as Pat O'Hara. He'd been sat in a booth by himself late one evening, nursing a beer that had grown tepid n his sweaty grasp, still in his uniform. His gun belt sat on the table next to his badge. Nobody engaged him in conversation, and that suited him fine, until ? came along. To say that she was beautiful would be flattery, but there was something undeniably attractive about her. Maybe something a little more to Pat's taste; something dirtier, something sexier - that was what she had. She smoldered here in this bar full of tired cops and middle aged men who drank here because it was one of the safest bars in town. When she sat down in front of Pat, he nearly dropped his tepid beer all over her. That was how it had started. Just a girl in a bar who thought that he looked down, and wondered what could get a big guy like Pat down. He told her and as he poured out his troubles she listened, never questioning, never interrupting. For the first time in a long time, someone was listening to Pat O'Hara When he asked to walk her home she didn't refuse; and neither did he when she asked him to come inside out of the cold and lonely night.  
  
It was the start of what should have been something good for Pat. He got his act together, started pulling his weight and more down at the precinct, and one by one his olds friends and colleagues were friends and colleagues again. Of course, this was Gotham, and the cruel fates of the city had another hand to play with Pat O'Hara. It was a Friday night, and for whatever reason ? had said that she couldn't meet him tonight. Pat hadn't complained, and he used the opportunity to swap a shift with one of the other cops at the precinct. If he worked a double shift tonight he would have the whole day tomorrow free, and hopefully whatever ? had had to do would be concluded by then. The thought of a whole day out, or in, with ? made the double shift fly by. He had been almost ready to call it a night when the call had come in. Someone had broken into the precinct! Pat could hear the gunfire in the background as the dispatcher desperately called for backup. Pat and his partner had taken only minutes to get back to the precinct house, skidding the squad car to an angry noisy halt outside. Pat pulled his as he ran up the precinct steps, and nearly ran headfirst into the Riddler and his gang. They came crashing out of the main doors, the Riddler flanked by two men and three girls all dressed in the same green and black question mark outfit as the Riddler. Pat could see that they were carrying bags from the evidence room; cash, drugs, jewelry - all confiscated from people who had been arrested by precinct cops. The two men were carrying small machine pistols, and they laid down a heavy covering fire as they backed down the steps. The Riddler was first to see Pat, and before Pat had had time to react two of the Riddler's girls were on him.  
  
He toppled down the steps with them on top of him. Nails scratched down the side of this face, and drew blood from the bottom of his left eye. Teeth dug into his shoulder as he hit the ground at the bottom of the steps. He could feel his partner tugging at the girl who had bitten him, but she held firm with arms and legs and teeth and wouldn't let go. In the meantime the other girl was driving her small fists into Pats gut over and over again. She was screaming, manic. "Get her off me!" yelled Pat as his partner fought with the girl whose teeth were threatening to sever his arm at the shoulder. Ignoring the body blows and the agony in his one eye as it filled with blood, Pat managed to get his hand to his gun. Bringing his one arm across he shoved an elbow into the throat of the girl who has still pounding at him. She fell backwards, her breath cut short. Slamming the put of his pistol into the side of the other girl's head, he felt her jaw finally release and Pat's partner pulled her away screaming. Clambering to his feet, Pat could only watch as the Riddler and the rest of his gang disappeared down the street in a van. He bought up his pistol and fired wayward shots as the van quickly shrank into the distance, but the blood that had flooded his one eye left his aim well off. Cursing, Pat turned, and was surprised to see the girl who had had knocked off him still laying on the steps on precinct house. She was had her back to him, and was retching on the steps as she gasped from breath. Pat unhooked a set of cuffs from his belt and walked towards her. Keeping his gun leveled, he snapped the cuffs open.  
  
"You'd best let me put these cuffs on you lady, before we go inside". Pat was amazed how croaky his voice was as he spoke. The adrenalin rush was fading now though, and he could already feel the puffy tenderness in his ribs and guts starting to spread, as well as a hot burning down the length of his back from the fall down the steps. The girl didn't move, she just kept retching, coughing and occasionally sobbing.  
  
"Listen lady, you've already assaulted a police officer on top of whatever you and your friends got up to in there. Don't make this worse for yourself". Pat holstered his gun and reached down for the girl. He was in no mood to be tender, but still his days of roughing up suspects in back alleys and bars were behind him. Placing a firm hand on her shoulder he twisted her around to face her. Her lime green domino masked had slipped down from her one eye, and she already had a thick bruise growing around her throat from the elbow Pat have shoved there. But still, it was unmistakably ?. Pat took a step back, as he locked eyes with her, and quickly - all too quickly- realization set in. All the interest she had shown in what he had done during the day. The times that she asked him to tell and retell those drab stories from the beat. The way she had absorbed every detail, and her particular fascination with the money and riches that criminals would surround themselves with. She told him how much she hated the fact that they had all that money, all the luxury and splendor that was missing from the lives of so many ordinary Gothamites. But still, she always wanted the stories.  
  
Pulling his gun back out of it's holster, Pat threw threw the cuffs into ?'s lap and raised the gun until it was level with her. Tears mixed with the blood that ran freely from his eye as he looked at her.  
  
"Why?" he asked, and this time his voice croaked with more than just pain from a fall and a beating.  
  
"Why not?" she replied. "Why not? That's the question Pat. That's the great riddle. Why the hell not?"  
  
And Pat couldn't even look at her as he fired.  
  
It had been cold blooded murder; but in that long, hot summer there were enough dirty cops to close ranks around an old friend - or even a new old friend like Pat O'Hara. Those who knew what the girl had done to him, they even sympathized with him. Naturally there was an investigation and the history of Pat and the girl was hauled out for all to see in a steaming hot courtroom in the heart of the city. It seemed so obvious in the light of day, before the commissioner and his board of inquiry. How could he have been such a fool? A pretty face to hide a viper, Pat had been her patsy all along. He hated the way they looked down at him, hated him for tarnishing the badge that they held so dear.   
  
The evidence to make a murder conviction stick had long since disappeared, and O'Hara's partner wouldn't be the one to turn evidence on another cop. The board told him how they would protect the good name of his family, and of his uncle in particular. At the end of it the worst they could do was to serve him with a dishonorable discharge; but that didn't stop them revealing the tawdry history of his girl; her time with the Riddler's gang was revealed, and her spell as one of the Penguin's girls before that. By the end of the hearing, Pat wasn't even left with her memory.   
  
So now here he was, an over weight prison guard to lunatics and madmen. He'd only been out of work for three weeks when he had heard that Arkham was hiring, and how it could be a place for men like him. Men who knew how to treat the criminal, the sick and the evil. Five years since the end of that long hot summer, Pat had found himself in another place for old cops.  
  
  
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"I'd like to see him" said the doctor.  
  
"Sure." said Pat. He motioned for the rookie to open up the gate, and popped the safety of his revolver. Two of the guards, armed with shotguns, flanked the doctor and led him down to the gate. The rookie swiped his ID card through it, waited for the buzzer which sounded the deactivation of the gate to stop, and the opened it for the doctor. The doctor stepped through, and quickly shut the fate behind him. "It won't be necessary for you to follow me down to the doors," he said to the two guards who stood astonished on the other side of the gate "You'll only distrub him"  
  
"But you're.." started the one guard.  
  
"I'm the doctor, and nothing more thank you."  
  
The doctor began the long walk down to the door of the only occupied cell of this corridor. As he cleared the section of mesh that electrified the floor he heard the buzzer which now sounded the reactivation of the gates. A few seconds later he was at the door of the cell. The buzzer had stopped and the corridor was silent again. He reached up to the slide panel in the door and opened it, revealing the inside of the cell through the letterbox opening. It was dark, but something moved languidly inside, lolled in a low slung bed draped in shadow before turning it's face to the door and opening it's eyes. Even in the darkness of the cell the luminance, the gleam, of those mad eyes was unmistakable.  
  
"Joker" said the doctor  
  
"Jonathan"  
  
"We've already discussed the issue of first names Joker" said the doctor. "You can't use mine until I can use yours,"  
  
"Then call me Jo.. as in Jo-Ker" it was a pun, and a weak one, but enough to start the Joker chuckling. The doctor didn't know what drugs they had Joker on at the moment, but the unblinking stare in his face told the doctor that there was more than blood and madness in Joker's veins. The chuckles had turned into giggles, and from there it was only downhill.  
  
"I have a job for you Joker"  
  
"A job? For me? A Joker job?"  
  
"Yes..." the doctor sighed his frustration. The art of conversation was lost on this lunatic "A very special Joker job"  
  
"An outside Joker job?" The Joker had gotten up from the bed and was at the door now. His eyes, still unblinking, stared through the letter box opening. The doctor could hear the Joker's hands scratching at the metal door.  
  
"Yes. But first we have to do an inside job. We have to get you out."  
  
"Yes. Out." the thought of it sent the Joker hopping from foot to foot "Out and about in the big bad city.. the streets, the lights, the noises, the smells!" Joker held his nose, "Oh mercy the smells and.. my public!"  
  
"I need you to give a very special performance Joker, for a very special audience"  
  
The Joker stopped his hopping, and drew himself even closer to the door. The doctor drew back, as if Joker could have worked his way out through that tiny letterbox, as if the very essence of the Joker was leaking out from around the doorframe and out into the corridor to wash over him and cloak him in its cold embrace. Of course, he was right, because by now.. the Joker was laughing.  
  
"BATMAN!" howled the Joker, "BATMAN!"  
  
Shaking his head in dismay, the doctor walked away.  
  
  
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Meanwhile, in Gotham, it was a windswept and miserable night; and nowhere more so than on the roof of police headquarters. The sun had barely set when Gordon had heard the rapping on his window. He had turned, naturally, even though he already knew what he would find - a white card wedged into the window frame, embossed with the black emblem of the bat. Is was the signal. Batman wanted to talk to him. And so here he was, stood on a windswept roof, his rain coat flapping about around him, waiting for a voice from the shadows.  
  
"It was fear gas Jim," The voice came at last and, as always, it came from behind Jim Gordon.  
  
"Fear gas? But Scarecrows in Arkham, safely under lock and key" replied Gordon.  
  
"It's not Scarecrow using it. Someone must have happened upon one of his stashes somewhere in the city. Possibly during No Mans Land, maybe after during the redevelopment."  
  
"But why didn't the autopsy pick it up? We've had detailed toxicology workups on fear gas for the last two years." Gordon didn't like what he was hearing. He didn't doubt it's veracity for a moment, no more than he would doubt the word of the man who he spoke to. What he didn't like was the thought of another crook meddling with the Scarecrows fear gas. Maybe this time a crook not weighed down by Crane's obsession with fear. Maybe a crook with more smarts, or even worse a real plan. Worse again - someone either further down the dark and twisted path of madness than Jonathan Crane.  
  
"It's been.. spliced.. with a virus. It's a fear virus now Jim. That's what killed the men in the warehouse. They were so convinced that what they were seeing was real that they either shot themselves, shot their friends or just laid down and stopped breathing. That's how convinced they were Jim!"  
  
Gordon was dumbstruck. A second before his mind had been racing with the possibility of a new adversary with access to Scarecrow's fear gas. Now the adversary wasn't a person. It had become a thing, an intangible thing. After the horrors of the Clench, Gordon had thought that Gotham had had it's plague. But it looked like another was just on the horizon.  
  
"When Dr.Rosen was conducting the autopsy he must have come into contact with the virus."  
  
"But Rosen wasn't suffering a fear reaction," said Gordon "He took over a TV station"  
  
"He was psychotic," replied Batman "Or at least in the grip of some kind of psychotic episode. It's my guess that the fear virus mutated and had a different effect on Rosen than on the men who died in that warehouse. It's in the wild now Jim.."  
  
Gordon looked out over the rooftops of the city, his city, the city he had sworn to protect. After everything it had been through; crime, plagues, earthquakes; how much more could Gotham take. How much would it take before someone imposed another No Mans Land on this godforsaken place, one which they would never repeal? When would Gotham have suffered too much.  
  
Almost as if he could sense the thoughts running through Gordon's mind, Batman drew up next to him, his cloak billowing out behind him in the wind. "She's a big city Jim, she can take it." he said, looking out over the same rooftops as Gordon.  
  
"She can Batman.. but can we?"  
  
Batman turned and looked at Gordon, a man he called friend, a man with all the dignity and strength the Bruce Wayne had seen and loved in his own father. He looked into the eyes that had seen a city come crumbling down, and had stayed to rebuild it without a cave or a car or a utility or a secret identity to retreat into. Batman looked at Jim Gordon, and had no answer for him.  
  
"We'd better get out of this wind." he said.  
  
"Yeah," agreed Gordon, "There's a storm coming".   
  
  



	6. Chapter Six

It had been three weeks, and the Joker was still loose in his city.  
  
The sky was burning, but to his unspoken gratitude it was only the fire of the dying sun as another day fell weary into it's grave. He looked out over the city. The buildings, proud against the blazing backdrop on the sunset. The unmistakable landmarks that turned a simple silhouette into a skyline, the unforgettable shadow of the city of Gotham against the sun.  
  
But the city was quiet. Not because the day was drawing to an end. Some called New York the city that never slept. Well, if that was the case, then Gotham was the city that slept through the day after the night before.. if only to muster up the energy of for the night yet to come. No, this wasn't the quiet of city set for slumber. This was the quiet of an animal when it is cornered, as it eyes it pursuer and gauges it's chances for survival. This was the kind of quiet that children became when they heard a noise on the stairs, or the creaking of floorboards in the dead of night. For in truth, terror does scream or gibber or howl. Terror is a very quiet thing.  
  
Jim Gordon looked out over his city, and knew why it was afraid.  
  
It had been three weeks, and the Joker was still loose.  
  
  
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"It's a ruse Alfred, a bluff. If I'm going to save Gotham I've got to leave it at the mercy of the Joker."  
  
Bruce Wayne stood in the centre of the Batcave, half clad in the uniform of the Batman. He pulled his gauntlets on and secured them with straps inside the narrow cuffs. Behind, Alfred waited dutifully with the cape and cowl of the Bat in his hands.  
  
"I've just got to trust that Gordon and his men can handle the Joker.."  
  
"And in the meantime Sir", interjected Alfred, "I presume that you have a plan"  
  
Bruce raised an eyebrow. Since the first day after his parent's death, he couldn't remember a day when he hadn't had a plan. He remembered watching the sunrise that morning over the dark peaks that were the skyscrapers of Gotham. He remembered his stinging, tear reddened eyes. He remembered the silence in the house that was no longer warm with the souls of his parents. He remembered waking up and realizing that the world was harsh and brutal and unfair and wrong. He remembered the plan and the plans since.  
  
"Yes Alfred" he said, taking the heavy leather cowl and cape in his hands, "I have a plan".  
  
Bruce pulled the cowl over his head. The cape unfurled almost soundlessly to the floor. Alfred could no more repress the shiver that ran down his spine now then he could the first time that Bruce had stepped out in front of him wearing that uniform. The first time that Bruce had stopped being Bruce before his very eyes and had become something else. Become Batman.  
  
"I'll be calling in an expert" said Batman.  
  
  
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In contrast with it's stark concrete corridors, steel doors and heavy locks, the administrative wing of Arkham Asylum was a tribute to Victorian opulence, and the office of Arkham's chief resident psychiatrist, Dr Lucent, was no exception. A thick green carpet swathed the floor, while the walls were bedecked with certificates, portraits, and carefully chosen racks of books.   
  
Batman leant over the heavy red wood desk, his gloved hands planted firmly on it's green leather top. Rain water dripped from the nose of his cowl and splattered on the papers that Lucent had pulled jealously away from the Dark Knight as he leant towards him. In the light of the small brass desk lamp, Batman's shadow crept up the walls like the creeping tendrils of early morning mist. His eyes burnt with fury, the fury that compelled him to his nightly patrols. The same fury that now compelled him to tear this asylum, and everything it stood for, down.  
  
"You're telling me what?" growled the Batman.  
  
"Jonathan Crane is no longer a patient of this hospital", Lucent shuffled the papers into a neater pile and tried to brush the droplets of water off without smudging the ink. "He is, in fact, a respected member of the faculty"  
  
"You've letting that psychopath practice medicine?  
  
"Jonathan has been cured. The methods that we developed together have returned to him his sanity, and we have high hopes for many of the other patient's here"  
  
Batman pulled back from Lucent and away from the desk. His cape swirled, and for a moment plunged the room into darkness as it obscured the light from the desk lamp. Lucent gasped, and when light once more filled the room the Batman was behind him, his hand on Lucent's shoulder and his mouth at his ear.  
  
"Show me." he whispered.  
  
The office of Professor Jonathan Crane was no less opulent than that of his custodian and patron Dr.Lucent. It's owner however, was far more prepared for the arrival of Batman. He was already on his feet as Batman barged into the room, his caped flaring out behind him like the wings of the mythic bat the city believed him to be. Right now he didn't need the urban legend behind him. He was fire and anger and fury and darkness - cloaked and hooded in black leather.  
  
"Ah.. the Dark Knight" he cooed as Batman closed the distance between them.  
  
"Tell me what you've done to him!" ordered the Batman, levelling his finger at Dr.Lucent. "What was it this time Crane? More fear gas? Have you got Lucent so terrified he's giving you free run of the asylum for your sick little games and experiments?"  
  
"Quite the opposite" replied Crane. Despite the looming figure of the Batman he seemed completely relaxed. He leant back against the broad desk which dominated the room and crossed his arms across his chest. "The only person who has been exposed to any fear gas in Arkham.. is me"  
  
  
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There are times when all the computers, forensics and science in the world aren't worth anything. Sometimes the tables are turned and all the deductions you've made turn out to be wrong and there are no more clues to follow. Sometimes being a detective is all about one thing.. legwork.   
  
Nowhere was safe from his search. Batman relentlessly searched the city, a fearsome shadow that prowled across it's rooftops in the long night. Batman searched for the Answer. Crane had confessed that he had been using fear gas to control himself, to make himself sane, by developing a morbid and persistent terror of the wrongs he might commit against society. In a very real way he had become afraid of the world itself, and how it might judge him. Although he denied it, Batman could see the signs of his handiwork on other inmates of Arkham as well. The same inmates who would normally have jeered and cursed at him as he was led down the long concrete corridor back to his cell were instead cowed in his presence. they huddled in the corners of their cells as they heard his voice drift down the corridor; squeezed their eyes tight shut as his footsteps passed the their doors. In an attempt to bring sanity to the maddened masses of Arkham, and finally prove his own theories on the nature and powers of fear, Crane had shown them all their own inner demons. But men and monsters might know there innermost fears as well as they know themselves, and bringing them into the harsh light of day does not dampen them or make them any more real. The thing that scared the murderous lunatics of Arkham as Crane was led, head hung low, back to his briefly vacant cell, was Crane himself. The man who could control the fear that paralyzed them even now.   
  
Despite the fact that Batman had discovered Crane "at large", it did not answer the many questions posed by The Answer. Somehow he had gotten hold of Crane's fear gas and had created a virus from it, a virus that no threatened to engulf Gotham City.   
Batman had seen the result of the virus; firstly the bodies of a group of small time criminals who tore themselves apart when the virus caused them hallucinate their worst fears, nightmares so vivid that they had literally scared the men to death. The second example was the police forensics expert who, exposed to the virus while examining the previous victims, had become so terrified by the stories of the hellish lives of orphans in Peru that he had taken a TV show audience hostage and killed the very man who had first brought the images to mind - the TV evangelist Buddy Doyle.   
Batman had seen the pattern almost immediately, and his brief meeting with the Answer had confirmed some of his suspicions, and heightened his own worst fears; but none of these things were deductions. He had been too late to save any of these people. This was just case history now. To be remembered, as fuel for the hunt if nothing more, but worthless to him now. None it contained the clues that he needed. Clues to the location of the Answer, to what his plans were, what his next move would be. In the jet black night of Gotham City, the Batman hunted.   
  
But with every place he searched, he fell further and further behind his prey. He left a trail of victims for the Dark Knight to follow that criss-crossed the city four times over. He finds them everywhere. Shivering, wretched, howling their terror at the smiling moon. Paralyzed by waking nightmares more vivid than the dull gray-brown reality of their lives, their minds ravaged mercilessly by the their darkest, deepest subconscious horrors. Each and every one a victim of the Answer and his fear virus. With very new discovery he falls a step behind, fails to see the pattern. With every new discovery he must fight hard to save another life. Gripped by fear, the everyday dangers of the world play little part in the Answer's victims lives. He finds them face down in overflowing baths, or sat in kitchens filled with gas from unlit stoves. He finds them in the middle of the highway, the lights of the oncoming cars little more than fireflies in the night in comparison to the gleaming eyes of the night born fiends that haunt the shattered souls that roam the city now.   
  
With every step, every discovery Batman fears that there is no pattern. That the virus is simply spreading on the warm winds of Gotham. The threat of the virus has come to fruition, and what had been a contagion has become a plague. in the first rays of sunlight of a new day in Gotham, the screams of the haunted mingle with the wails of sirens of Gotham's finest, until only Batman can still tell them apart.   
  
His city, his city gripped by panic.   
  
His failure.   
  
His greatest fear...   
  
  
  
  



	7. Chapter Seven

They say your life is supposed to flash before your eye's the minute before you die. For Pat O'Hara, the only things that flashed before his eyes were the forty eight floors of Gotham Plaza as he plummeted from it's roof onto the unforgiving concrete below. Perhaps if his life had flashed before him he might have done more than just screamed into the wind that rippled the corpulent flesh of his body as he raced towards the ground. Perhaps he would have seen the things that he had done in his life and known some morsel of guilt, repentance or remorse. Sadly, the last thing thoughts that Pat O'Hara would have would be fear, confusion and hatred for the man who had brought him here.   
  
Hatred for the Joker.   
  
High above, the Joker laughed until tears rolled down his chalk white face as he looked at the dark red spot where Pat O'Hara's body had exploded against the concrete floor.   
  
"I hated you Pat O'Hara," he cackled "And now you're dead!" The Joker spat over the edge of the low wall that protected the edge of the roof of the Gotham Plaza, and watched as it tumbled through the air. I landed silently amidst the seething smear that had been Pat O'Hara. Thinly visible tendrils of steam rose up from his still warm entrails as they lay strewn on the sidewalk. The Joker wondered what mysteries of the future were foretold there in those scattered chunks of intestine and bowel, what hidden wisdom lay in Pat's quivering organs.   
  
"It's time to feel the real fear.." muttered the Joker, turning away from the edge of the roof. A cold wind was blowing, and storm clouds whirled overhead. Whatever secrets had been hidden inside Pat, the universe knew them to, and was bending itself towards the drama that would unfold. Or at least, that's what the Joker thought. Perhaps it was just another cold and windy night in Gotham with the threat of rain and a damp chill in the air. Maybe that's what the Gothamites thought as they scurried around beneath the Joker, rushed to their homes to be out of the wind and rain.   
  
Whatever the truth, the Joker was standing on top of Gotham plaza with enough heavy ordinance to start a civil war and a full dose of the fear virus running through his veins. Neither Pat, nor Gotham, nor the universe, could be ready for the consequences.   
  
Three rooftops away, Jim Gordon was watching.   
  
"Your tip was on the money Harvey," he said to Harvey Bullock as the pair of them squatted down behind a stumpy an air conditioning vent that puffed plumes of smoke and steam into the air. Gordon passed his binoculars to Harvey, and reached inside his jacket for his trusty pipe.  
  
Bullock raised the binoculars to his eyes, carefully adjusting the focus. "That freak's got some pretty heavy ordance over there Chief," he said "No wonder Charlie gave him up so fast. Charlie's family live round here." Charlie was one of Bullock's underworld informants who had given up the Joker's location earlier that evening when Bullock and Gordon had paid him a visit. Bullock thought at the time that Charlie had been a little too hasty to give this piece of information up and know he could see why. The Joker was armed and ready for war. Bullock hoped that the GCPD might just be spared the front line. Either way, at least he had gotten here in time to see Pat O'Hara take his final jumps. Bullock hated crooked cops, and ex-crooked cops who still worked the system were even worse.   
  
Three rooftops away, Batman was watching.  
  
Swathed in his heavy cloak he had tucked himself beneath the eve's of an apartment block which looked down across the intervening rooftops to the Joker's location. The wind was cold up here, and it bit through even the extra thermal protection that Alfred had insisted that Bruce had worn this evening. "Even crime-fighters can fall foul to influenza!" he had lectured, his voice echoing around the lofty heights of the cave. Bracing himself against the chill wind, Batman wished he had taken Alfred's advice a little more seriously. Still.. things would heat up soon.  
  
Thee rooftops away, the Joker was making his move.  
  
Leaning over the edge of the roof, the Joker watched as an ambulance pulled up outside the Plaza. Paramedics jumped out and, despite the obvious evidence in front of them, checked the quivering shell that been Pat O'Hara for a pulse. The Joker chuckled softly as they struggled to ger Pat's body onto a stretcher, and broke down in hysterics as Pat's body slipped out of the body bag and back onto the floor as they tried to load it into the van.   
  
"Despite everything that happened between us Pat," said the Joker been gasping lungfuls of air and uncontrollable fits of laughter, "you could always make me laugh!".  
  
"Don't you know that you're not funny?" The voice came from behind the Joker, and his first instinct was the scream something like "The Bat!" or "The rodent!" as he spun to empty the contents of his gun at his nemesis; but before he moved he realised that the voice he had heard hadn't been the Bat. It was someone else, someone he recognised. He turned slowly, his gun lowered, and confronted the fact that he had been wrong twice in as many nanoseconds.  
  
"Who the hell are you?" he said, as he came face to face with a face that owned a voice which he thought he had recognised.  
  
"I'm the Answer", replied the Answer. He was standing on the veyr edge of the roof, his heels out over open space. His cloak had been drawn around him and fastened at the fonr tin the style of a long coat. The white latex and leather of his suit was stained with dark brown patches of dried blood and crude stitching could be seen holding together rips and tears in the sleeves and legs.  
  
"You need a tailor," said the Joker, "Here," he reached into his pocket, "Try Alonzo.. he really is quite good"  
  
"You won't need a tailor were you're going!" replied the Answer. He stepped softly down off the edge of the roof and began to unfasten his cloak. "Unless you had a pinstripe straight jacket in mind". The Answer walked slowly towards the Joker, each step methodically placed. They could have been ballet dancers, each step timed perfectly with the next. The Joker didn't realise it, but for every step forward the Answer took, he was taking one step back. The Answer prowled the rooftop, his every step guiding the Joker across the roof as well. In no more than a few seconds the Joker had been separated from his arsenal and was standing with this thighs pressing against the low wall which protected the edge of the rooftop.  
  
Three rooftops away, Jim Gordon was watching.  
  
"Who the hell is that ?!" said Bullock.  
  
"I don't know," replied Jim Gordon, "but I don't think he's one of .. them". Gordon knew that Bullock knew what he meant. Gordon knew that Bullock had come to accept them as much as he had.. come to accept the masked vigilantes who were the only ones keeping a lid on Gotham. Gordon had come to accept it too, that no matter how much he did, no matter his struggles and sacrifices, no matter his loss, he was caught up in a greater game. A game of gods and titans and monsters. Monsters like the Joker. The Joker was the monster who held the most fear for Gordon.  
  
"SWAT are in position Commissioner," said Bullock. It was only in times like this that Bullock would Gordon "Commissioner" as opposed to "Commish" or "Boss". Despite appearances, Bullock was a by-the-book cop when being a by-the-book cop mattered. He knew that it mattered now. He could tell from the look in Jim Gordon's eye.  
  
"Do they have the shot?" Gordon asked the question numbly. Was this it? After all the heartache, after all the long nights, after all the times when he had longed to say the word, to give that order? He didn't even know now if he could. He couldn't kill the Joker in No Man's Land when he had every provocation, every right and no shackles of law to restrain him. Even then he couldn't do it. Was it because then it would be over? Was it because he feared that the nightmares, the terror and the sadness wouldn't end with him? When the hatred faded, what would be left?  
  
"SWAT can't make the shot Commissioner" said Bullock. "That other guys in the way".  
  
"Dammit.." said Gordon, "What is he up to now?"  
  
But The Answer had nothing to do with the Batman, and three rooftops away Batman was still watching and waiting.  
  
He watched and read the Joker's lips. "Who the hell are you anyway? You're not Batman or one of his lost boys.. so who made you a member of the club?"  
  
"There is no 'club' Joker. There's just sickness and fear riddling these streets. Where it's time for a new kind of fear. Fear of me! Fear of justice! Fear of the light! You and all your kind hiding in your dark stinking rat holes where you belong, terrified of the light, never to return! Never ! Never !" The Answer was quaking as he delivered his sermon to the Joker. Spittle flew from the corners of his mouth as he ranted; "I'm sick of it! Sick of the madness! Sick of the depravity! Sick of the quivering mewling fear of ordinary people! It has to stop! You have to stop.." and as the voice of The Answer trailed off into silence, the Joker recognized the look in the eyes behind that mask.  
  
"Err... boys.. now might be a good time to kill our uninvited guest!"  
  
Batman should have been moving for over half a minute now. He should have covered the three roftops between him, the Joker and the The Answer and right now be taking out Joker's thugs. Batman should be moving, but he wasn't. Three rooftops away, Batman's finger was resting on the trigger of his grappling gun but he couldn't fire.   
  
What if he missed the rooftop of the next building?   
  
What if he fell?   
  
What if one of those thugs got of a lucky shot. He had always known that hat was al it would take. One lucky shot and it was all over. It could be any of them, any of his nemeses, or maybe just some kid who gets lucky one day in a back alley. He had also know what the chances where, the probabilities. He knew the distance from this rooftop to the next. He knew the length of the grapple line, the impact pressure of the head when launched and the tensile strength of the line when fully extended. He knew that even if all these things failed him he was fast enough to catch a window ledge, a flag pole, a washing line, and break his fall before he hit bottom.  
  
Batman also knew that he had a fully incubated dose of fear virus running through his body.  
  
He couldn't pull the trigger.  
  
Three rooftops away, Batman watched as the Joker's thugs opened fire.  
  
The Answer moved when he heard the safety catch of a gun being released behind him. He spun, his heavy white coat unfurling around him like a set of huge white wings. From inside the coat, thick coils of green gas appeared and grew quickly into an angry cloud that began to flood the rooftop as The Answer as he stepped towards the Joker's men.  
  
"Don't you know who I am?" he asked, his voice with evil intent, "I'm the Batman."  
  
Coughing and choking, Joker stumbled across the rooftop. Somewhere up here he had guns and rocket launchers and flame throwers and explosives. He had had such a night planned. He had wanted fireworks, mayhem, mischief, a few laughs perhaps and then (of course) the Bat. He hated it when one of these pretenders crashed the party.  
  
"What's going out there?" Gordon shouted in his radio. "Someone give a report!"  
  
"I can't see nothing " said Bullock as he stared across the rooftops and into the cloud of green smoke through his binoculars. Suddenly his radio crackled into life and he brought it quickly to his ear.  
  
"Commish - Hickley from SWAT say's he has a shot."  
  
"On who?!" Gordon wouldn't take the risk of taking down one of the Batman's people and seeing as he didn't know who this newcomer was, how could he be sure that it wasn't one of the Batman's growing army of retainers?  
  
"He's not sure Commish. He thinks he's got Joker."  
  
Gordon was silent. He couldn't take the risk. He couldn't give the order. He couldn't finish it. Again.  
  
"Tell him.. tell him.."  
  
"Commish"  
  
"Tell him to hold his fire."  
  
On the rooftop, amid the smoke and chaos, the decision was about to be taken out of Gordon's hands. The Joker was sure he had covered every inch of the rooftop in search of his guns. Whatever part of this rational mind was left told him that they must still be here somewhere, that no one could have moved all of them, but amid the smoke and the chaos the rational part of the Joker's brain was the last thing he was thinking with. He could gurgling coming from inside the cloud somewhere and some part of his mind was telling him that someone was having a seizure. He didn't know how he knew, but he did. Something was happening to his mind; what had seemed so rational before was ceasing to make sense. Thoughts came and went which were not of his own design. Running to a fro inside the thick green fog he realized that he wasn't laughing. He should have been laughing. He should have found his funny. He always found chaos and destruction funny. It was the only truth, the ultimate punch line. You couldn't control the world around you. Anything could happen, and should, and would and when you least expected it.. it was all going to end. So why wasn't he laughing?  
  
Whatever part of the The Joker's rational mind told him that the pseudo reality he had constructed for himself was breaking down and he could do was run through the clouds. It would tell him that this was symptomatic of another mental collapse, one that might leave him nothing more than a gibbering wreck in a padded cell in gold old Arkham. No fanfair, no fireworks, no blaze of glory. Just year upon year of being fed baby food with a spoon by guards who would just as soon let you starve.  
  
But all the Joker could do was Run and run and run.   
  
Run from the Truth, run from the facts, run from sanity.   
  
Run from the Answer.  
  
On the rooftop, amid the smoke and the chaos the Joker ran right into what was left on his rational mind and did something which he hadn't done in a long, long time.  
  
Three rooftops away the Batman stood with his finger on the trigger and listened to the Joker scream.   
  
  
  
  
  



	8. Chapter Eight (Final Chapter)

"Can you hear me Sir?"  
  
Alfred's voice was it usual mixture of concern and sardonicism. He knew that Batman could hear him. What Alfred was really asking was "Are you listening?", and he certainly wasn't including the word "Sir" in the question.  
  
"I can hear you Alfred." Batman answered. He was hanging from a narrow cord, forty feet above the main canteen of Arkham Asylum, above the floodlights that illuminated the enormous room. Below him, inmates shuffled in line to the mess counter before taking their cardboard trays and plastic cutlery to one of the bolted down benches to eat at the bolted down tables. It was lima bean night.  
  
"Have you located the elusive Professor Crane yet Sir?"  
  
"No. He isn't with the other inmates."  
  
Batman moved easily a few feet up the cord and placed a foot lightly on one of the metal beams that criss-crossed the high ceiling, supporting the enormous lights. He unhooked his grapple from the small air vent above him and let the cord retract automatically into his belt before shifting his whole weight onto the beam. He drew his cloak around him and sank back into the shadows.  
  
"Which means he's either in solitary.."  
  
"Or he still has free reign of the asylum."  
  
Batman did not reply. Static was the only sound between the two of them for a few moments. Alfred knew better than to speak during these moments, the moments when Bruce thought and planned, the moments before Batman acted. Finally, he spoke.  
  
"The mood suppressants are doing their job. I'm going in."  
  
"Be careful Sir."  
  
It was three weeks since the Joker had been apprehended on top of the Gotham Plaza hotel. Three weeks since the Joker had been driven deeper into his personal labyrinth of madness and mania by an almost lethal dose of Scarecrow fear toxin. Three weeks since Batman had stood and watched helpless, unable to move, paralysed by his own fear. Three weeks since Batman had realised that he was infected with the fear virus and that he had been for some time. Three weaks since he had been able to admit, and confront, his failure.  
  
It all made sense; his failure to capture the Answer, his failure to notice the facts, his failure to follow the clues that pointed back here. He had failed to confront the only man capable of creating the fear virus in the first place. He had failed to stop Jonathan Crane.  
  
In the end, he had had no choice but to use the drugs. He hated it. Hated compromising his edge, hated to admit that he wasn't in control anymore. Everything was about control to him; in a way he was even in control enough to understand that about himself. Ever since his parents had died, it had always been about control. Controlling life, controlling death. Now, perched above a broiling mass of hatred and insanity, he had to confront a man that terrified him because of a stream of chemicals that had infected his blood and his mind. He couldn't trust the fear anymore, couldn't trust his own mind. He couldn't tell which doubts, which questions in his mind came from his mind and which from the drugs. It was doubts and questions and fears that had left him frozen with panic before. His only option had been to take more drugs, to counteract those already in his system. And now he didn't know which fears he should be having that he wasn't. It was as if someone had stolen his years of experience. He was fresh on the streets again, nothing more than a kid in a disguise without a plan or a thought. The soldier he had been before he had realised what the war was.  
  
Batman reached up and opened the grill over the air vent. He reached inside and hauled himself up into it, his cloak slinking behind him, a black serpent that moved through the shadows. Below, the lunacy continued, mindless to his presence. He slid deftly into the narrow vent, closing the grill behind him with the tip of his boot. He moved forward, pulling himself up the shaft hand over hand. He stopped for a moment. His heart was beating fast in his chest, he could feel it pounding against the metal wall of the shaft. It sounded like a gong being struck again and again and for a moment he was sure that someone below would hear it, that they would know that he was here. What happened if they found him? What happened if they found him and he was stuck here; trapped in the dark tight spaces? What happened if ..  
  
"Sir."  
  
Alfred's voice in his ear.  
  
"Sir, you're heartbeat has picked up by forty beats. Are you alright Sir?"  
  
Alfred's voice in his ear, bringing him back down to Earth.  
  
"Yes," he realised that he was panting, "Yes I'm fine thank you Alfred."  
  
He had strapped the miniature heart monitor to his chest before he had left for Arkham tonight. He could feel it now, a small cold disk pressing on his pounding heart. He felt his breathing and his heart rate slow.  
  
"Sir, perhaps this would be an opportune time,"  
  
"No Alfred. No police. Not here. He's too dangerous this time. If they get infected.."  
  
"Like you, you mean Sir?"  
  
Alfred's voice again. The voice of reason.  
  
"Alfred. This isn't the time. Batman out."  
  
He began to climb again, up the narrow shaft, his pace faster and more determined. He reached the summit of his climb and began to descend down another shaft. He was heading for the office that he knew belonged to Jonathan Crane.  
  
  
  
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----  
  
Crane sat in his office, a thick book resting across his bony lap. He read slowly, his eyes sparkling under the soft light of his desk lamp; his finger caressing each line of densely printed text. More books were piled on his desk, his leather and gilt bound harem. Crane's only love was his books; his only succor the wisdom contained within; his only enemies, the bullies who had ridiculed his lust for knowledge. The bullies had taught him his most important lessons though, the bullies had taught him all about fear.  
  
Batman dropped soundlessly into the office behind Crane. He moved as something less than a shadow, a mere shade. He moved forward, looming forth out of the gloom.  
  
"Good evening Professor Crane."  
  
Crane leapt from the chair, knocking his book to the floor and scattering one of the taller piles. He turned, and the fear gave way to hatred in his eyes.  
  
"Eugh. Batman.", Crane feigned a look of disgust. He stooped and began to pick his books up from the floor, handling them as gently as injured birds. "I hope you haven't come for my medical advise."  
  
"I've come to put you back in a cell where you belong Crane." Batman took a step forward, one gauntleted hand reaching inside the folds of his cape, "But I want you to do something for me first."  
  
Crane stood up, the last few books rescued from the floor.  
  
"I'm not in the business of trading favours with masked lunatics. Ask the Riddler."  
  
"I'm not in the business of asking favours of sociopathic murderers Crane," Batman drew a small vial of clear liquid from inside his cloak, "and I'm not making an exception in your case." He placed the vial on the desk. "I know what you've been up to .. Scarecrow"  
  
Crane jumped back, "Don't say that name!"  
  
"Why not?" asked Batman, closing the gap between himself and Crane, "That's your name isn't it? The Scarecrow .. Master of Fear?"  
  
"I'm not the Scarecrow!" shouted Crane, backing away until he was up against the wall. "I'm Professor Jonathan Crane!"  
  
"I don't know how you did it," said Batman, his eyes boring down into Crane, "I don't know how you made a virus that made me see you as The Answer, Scarecrow, but you left your dirty little fingerprints all over it."  
  
Batman pointed at the vial on the table.  
  
"After I analysed the fear virus, I knew it could only have been manufactured by you."  
  
Crane picked the vial up from the table between two bony fingers.  
  
"This? But that's .."  
  
"You even dosed me while I was here Crane. Ingenious."  
  
Crane dropped to his knees, the vial still held delicately in his hand.  
  
"You aren't listening are you ?" he muttered under his breath.  
  
"What?"  
  
"I said 'You aren't listening.', you aren't listening to me. This isn't one of my mine. I didn't make this.", Crane's voice was weak, defeated.  
  
Batman looked down at Crane. He looked small and pathetic, cupping the vial in quivering hands as if it were a new born child. "It's beautiful. But it isn't one of mine." Batman drew closer, a reached out with a heavy gauntleted hand to take the vial from Crane.  
  
"It is one of yours. It's Scarecrow toxin. Refined ? Yes. Improved ? Immeasurably. But undeniably yours. You are the only one who could have manufactured this."  
  
Crane snatched the vial away and scuttled backwards on his knees before getting quicker to his feet.  
  
"I can't have made this." he said. He brought the vial close to his eye, letting the weak lamp light shine through it. "I'm not afraid of it."  
  
"What are you talking about Crane?" Batman swept across the room and wrenched the vial from Cranes fingers.  
  
"I told you when you first came here. I'm not the Scarecrow anymore. I can't be the Scarecrow anymore .. because I'm afraid of him. I'm terrified of him!"  
  
"The fear gas?"  
  
"Exactly. I created a Scarecrow toxin for myself, under Dr. Lucent's guidance. I discovered my greatest fear. My greatest fear was the Scarecrow."  
  
"That doesn't prove that you didn't create the fear virus Scarecrow."  
  
"I'm not Scarecrow! Not anymore! Why aren't you listening?". Crane slumped forward, his eyes to the floor. "I'm Jonathan Crane, and he doesn't know how to make fear toxin. Only Scarecrow knows that."  
  
"Not quite."  
  
The voice took them both by surprise. Batman spun around to face the door, his cape whirling around him, sending the small room into darkness for a moment as it blotted out the light from the small desk lamp. Crane yelped in surprise and tumbled backwards, scattering papers from the desk as he fell, then scrambled, away from the owner of that voice.  
  
Away from the Answer.  
  
  
  
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----  
  
"I have to say that I didn't think the toxin would have such a profound affect on you Batman."  
  
The Answer strolled across the room. His white jacket was splattered with dried blood, dark brown patches that flaked onto the floor as he moved. Half his mask was torn, revealing a pallid section of cheek.  
  
Batman stood at the opposite end of the room, his back to the window. Weak light from it turned him into a black silhouette against the shimmering gray of the curtains. His eyes burned in the darkness and his cape did little to hide the flexing mass of muscle beneath it. He stared at the Answer.  
  
He had been wrong again.  
  
Crane wasn't the Scarecrow and the Scarecrow wasn't the Answer. He had made a mistake, he had made more than one mistake. In his desperation to find a solution he had returned here, searching for clues that didn't exist, a blind man groping in the darkness. He had finally lost. His city, his people, they would all pay the price of his hubris. It was over.  
  
All that was left now was vengeance.  
  
"You must be very, very angry right now." continued the Answer. He idly stepped over Crane's prone and quivering form and moved closer to Batman. "All those clues and you couldn't find .. the answer? Or is that The Answer?" The Answer snorted before turning away and walking back across the room.  
  
"You see, that's your greatest fear Batman. Not the Joker, or Two-Face or Scarecrow," he looked disdainfully down at Crane. "You're greatest fear is failure, and it's been haunting you since the moment we met. And just like poor Professor Crane here, you've made it come true all by yourself. You've been defeated Batman, you've been beaten by a foe more maniacal than you ever can have imagined." The Answer all but took a bow as he glided around Batman. "And there's nothing you can do about it!"  
  
Suddenly Batman's hand shot out, a black serpent cutting through the musty glow of the office. His fingers clasped the Answer's throat, the white leather of his mask creaking as Batman pulled him roughly towards him. He glared down, his eyes burning behind his cowl, spittle clinging do his lips spoke.  
  
"They say that I'm not human". His voice wasn't the voice of Batman or Bruce Wayne. It was darker, a guttural voice that resonated in his throat and spat acid tasting phlegm up onto his tongue. "Did you know that?" The Answer opened his masked lips to speak, but only the faintest of gasps could escape. His eyes were bulging under his mask, dark red lines crisscrossed his bloodshot sclera. The Bat's fingers grew tighter around the Answer's neck. Something cracked in his neck as the Bat lifted him off his feet.  
  
"They say that I'm not human."  
  
The Answer's legs twitched in mid air as his hands flailed weakly against Batman's arm.  
  
"You're killing him!" squealed Crane, tugging on the ragged leather hem of the Bat's cloak. "You're killing him."  
  
Batman looked down at Crane.  
  
"I know."  
  
Batman turned his eyes away from Crane and away from the Answer. He blocked out the weight of the flailing mass at the end of his arm. He blocked out the distraction of the insistent tugging at this cape. His eyes focused out of the window, through a narrow gap in the curtains. He could see the Gotham skyline, a proud silhouette dotted with diamond points of light. It's gothic spires punctured clouds of smoke coughed up from ships at it's harbor. Fat lazy airships gliding over it, neon advertising blinking in the night. He almost hear the rush of the traffic, the hum of the city, the thunder of footsteps through it's streets. Could almost smell the acrid smog of rush hour, the mysterious spice of the night air.  
  
Almost.  
  
He couldn't hear anything except the screaming.  
  
Couldn't smell anything but the burning.  
  
Couldn't see anything except a city, his city, lost forever.  
  
And a shadow cast over it all. The shadow of a bat wing.  
  
"Sir? Can you hear me? Master Bruce!"  
  
Alfred's voice. Grounding him again.  
  
"Sir! The heart monitor Sir!"  
  
Alfred's voice. As it had been in his childhood, as it was now. As it had been, after they had gone, after he had failed for the first time. He remember the words.  
  
"Justice, Master Bruce, not revenge. If it must be; then that must be the way of it."  
  
Batman's head swung away from the window and his eyes locked on the limp form of the Answer. It was a dead weight on his arm, limbs flailing no more. The Answer looked at Batman with faraway eyes.  
  
"You've killed him."  
  
Crane's voice. Insistent. Nasal.  
  
Batman dropped the Answer. His body hit the floor with a thud. For a moment he was limp; lifeless. The room was silent.  
  
The Answer gasped.  
  
Batman looked down at the quivering, gasping, heaving form of the Answer. He looked so small now, shivering and wretching in the vast shadow of the Bat.  
  
"Sir, what happened?" Alfred's voice again.  
  
"Take off the mask Dr. Lucent."  
  
The Answer rolled onto his back and peeled the white leather mask from his face with a shaky hand. Underneath, was Dr. Lucent, chief psychiatrist and administrator of Arkham Asylum. Still gasping for air, his back arched as his chest rose and fell with each greedy breath.  
  
Batman crouched over him and withdrew a small vial from his utility belt. He placed one tapered end against Lucent's neck. "It's a mood suppressant Doctor, it'll help." Lucent nodded his consent. There was a soft hiss, and a small red light winked on on the side of the vial. Batman stood and turned of face Jonathan Crane.  
  
"It's over Scarecrow."  
  
Jonathan Crane stood up and walked towards the door, his head hung low.  
  
"Don't bother," he said bitterly, "I know the way."  
  
The door closed softly behind him, leaving Batman in the gloom, the only sound the gentle rasping of Lucent's breath.  
  
"Thank you Alfred."  
  
The voice of Bruce Wayne.  
  
  
  
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----  
  
Bruce Wayne sat in the Batcave, his eyes fixed on the giant view-screens which surrounded him. The cape and cowl lay discarded on the steel steps that lead up to the main computer terminals. Flashing past on the enormous screens were scenes from Gotham. The cave was painted red with the light from the fires that still burned in the dark city. Bruce watched solemnly as the GCPD scrambled units all over the city, maintaining order and delivering cases of fear-virus antidote to health centres throughout the city. It had come to this. After everything Gotham had been through, it had come to this again. Volunteers on the streets with food and medical supplies. Shelters for those whose homes had been ravaged by fire or seized by rioters. Nervous police on street corners.  
  
He heard the familiar rattle of Alfred's tea tray behind him as Alfred descended into the cave, the familiar clack of leather shoes on the brushed metal floor. The familiar voice.  
  
"Your medication Sir."  
  
Alfred placed the tray on the arm rest of Bruce's chair. A paper cup, half full of water and a selection of red and blue pills. Alfred waited patient as Bruce scooped up the pills and swallowed them without water.  
  
"Am I to take it that you will be dining in this evening Sir?"  
  
"Yes. Thank you Alfred."  
  
Alfred waited a moment longer before speaking.  
  
"If I might be so bold Sir, I was wondering if I might ask.."  
  
"About Crane?"  
  
"Yes. And about the Answer Sir."  
  
"Hm. When I first visited Arkham I was sure that Crane was the Answer. I presumed that he had abandoned the Scarecrow identity to throw me off the trail and used the fear gas to enhance the effect of his new costume. But when I went to Arkham, Lucent told me that the only person who had been exposed to fear gas since Crane had been allowed join the staff was Crane himself."  
  
"The purpose of this being?"  
  
"Crane created a variation of his fear gas that generated one specific phobic reaction in the victim. A mortal terror of the Scarecrow. When Crane exposed himself to this, he became terrified of the side of this personality that was the Scarecrow. Scarecrow became submerged under the Crane persona."  
  
"And so he was cured?"  
  
"So it would appear. The effect certainly convinced Lucent and the rest of the staff enough to let Crane join the staff on a provisional basis and to begin using his technique on the other inmates. He started with Harvey Dent."  
  
Bruce reached out a took a sip from the cup of water.  
  
"The whole treatment was flawed. Scarecrow was not an alternate personality for Crane as Two-Face is for Harvey. The hell that Crane put Harvey through is proof of that. When Crane created his phobia of the Scarecrow, he had no choice but to create a new persona to replace his sublimated Scarecrow persona. But the Scarecrow was not beaten so easily.  
  
The Scarecrow persona didn't lay dormant in Crane's psyche .. it was active the entire time. At times when it was able to gain ascendancy, it began working on a new variation of the fear gas."  
  
"Hence Professor Crane had no idea who had created the new fear virus."  
  
"Precisely. He should have been terrified of it, just like he was terrified of everthing else to do with the Scarecrow. But he wasn't, because this had been created after he had supposedly destroyed his Scarecrow personality.  
  
Scarecrow's plan was to use the fear gas to make Crane acknowledge him again. Scarecrow knew that just creating a new fear gas wasn't going to get him anywhere though, he would never have ascendancy long enough to subject himself to a dose successfully. Crane's fears were too potent for that. So Scarecrow created a fear virus, a variation of this fear gas that would be able to spread itself. This virus was the old fashioned type, designed to unleash the victims deepest fear. In Crane's case, the return of the Scarecrow."  
  
Bruce stood up and picked up his cape and cowl from the floor. Alfred remained at the side of this chair. The view-screens had turned to scenes of paramedics and fire-crews pulling the dead and the injured from collapsed and burning buildings. Bruce fell silent for a moment, holding the edge of his cape in a clenched fist.  
  
"By triggering this fear in Crane, the Scarecrow could actually trigger his own return."  
  
"Most ingenious," said Alfred.  
  
"The virus inevitably got of his control. The first victim was Crane's closest associate - Dr.Lucent. It stands to reason that Lucent's greatest fear would be to loose his mind. Surrounded by madness every day, who wouldn't fear that?"  
  
Alfred raised an eyebrow.  
  
"Who indeed?"  
  
"When Lucent was infected with the fear virus, it was he who created the persona of the Answer. The embodiment of this worst fears - himself as a madman, bent on spreading madness, not sanity, through the world. Somehow he got hold of some of Crane's formulas for the fear gas, then used some of Crane's old underworld contacts to get hold of the equipment to start manufacturing it."  
  
"All the time spreading the fear virus wherever he went."  
  
"Until the whole city was infected."  
  
"And was it also Dr.Lucent who released the Joker?"  
  
"I'm not sure. With Pat O'Hara dead, only the Joker knows. It might have been Lucent or Scarecrow, either one would have benefited from the chaos that the Joker created once free. On the other hand, I have a feeling that it might have been Crane."  
  
"Crane?"  
  
"I'm not sure that Crane was entirely ignorant of what was happening to him, Lucent and the other inmates. I think he may have felt the Scarecrow, felt him pushing on the boundaries of his mind. Perhaps he released the Joker to get my attention."  
  
"Doesn't Arkham have e-mail?"  
  
"It was too late of course by then for me to do anything about it," continued Bruce, ignoring Alfreds comments, "I was already infected with the fear virus."  
  
"And your own fear of failure prevented you from putting all the clues together in time."  
  
"I don't think so." answered Bruce. He ran his fingers along the edge of the cape and around the rim of the cowl. "I've accepted that there will be .. moments .. of failure in my career." Bruce's voice tailed off. His eyes and Alfreds were drawn to the glass case that held the last costume of the Jason Todd, the second Robin, slain by the Joker. Bruce had never forgiven himself for the death of his young partner, never let Jason's ghost rest. The wounds from the battle would never heal for him. "I've had to accept that. No, my greatest fear is that one day I might loose control. One day, one of them might push me so far, so long, so hard, that it isn't me that fights back .. "  
  
"But the Bat?"  
  
"Yes," replied Bruce, looking down at the hollow shape of the cowl, "The Bat. That's what stopped me from putting the clues together. That's what stopped me from rescuing the Joker. My every action was designed to create a scenario in which I might loose control."  
  
"But you didn't Sir." said Alfred, slowly walking down the stairs with the silver tray under his arm. "You didn't loose control."  
  
Bruce's mind whirled back across time and space to the office in Arkham. He could still feel Lucent's windpipe under his fingers, still hear the creaking of the soft leather as he squeezed and squeezed. He could feel the flailing that gradually grew softer and softer as the last breathes left Lucent's body. All the feelings, all the sensations that he had ignored when he was in that office where there now, bright and indelible in his memory.  
  
"Didn't I?" asked Bruce. He dropped the cape the floor once more and trudged up to the lonely seat in front of the vast monitors. He tried to ignore the familiar sound of Alfred's footsteps as they followed him. He felt the familiar touch of Alfred's hand on his shoulder.  
  
"Sir, I do believe that there is a problem in the docklands." Alfred pointed up a flashing red dot that hovered over a map of Gotham on one of the monitors.  
  
"Alfred, I .. can't", Bruce pushed Alfred's hand aside as he offered him the cape, retrieved from the floor.  
  
"You can Sir and, as much as it pains me to say it, you must. You are their hope Sir. Their guardian"  
  
Bruce took the cape from Alfred. It felt so heavy in his hands now, as if every blow it had ever weathered had left it's weight upon it; every drop of spilt blood, every triumph, every failure.  
  
"What if I loose control. I could kill someone. It doesn't need to be the Joker or Two Face or any of the others, it could just be some kid, some punk who gets mixed up in the wrong crowd and ends face to face with him". Bruce's eyes fixed once again on the empty eyes of the cowl.  
  
"With you Sir," corrected Alfred.  
  
"How can I take that risk Alfred? How can I take that risk with other people's lives?"  
  
"And what of the lives that you might save? And the lives that you might change? The city needs you Sir. More now than it ever has before."  
  
Alfred placed his hand once more on the shoulder of the boy whom he had raised after the death of his parents. The shoulder that he had watched move upwards until it passed his own as he had watched the boy grow into a man; a man more determined and resourceful than he had ever dared imagine that he might be. The man who he was proud to call master and friend.  
  
"I will be with you, Master Bruce," said Alfred.  
  
Bruce lifted the cape and cowl above his head and slowly slid them down. The mask closed tightly over his face.  
  
"Thank you Alfred."  
  
The voice of Batman. 


End file.
